What does Tribe teach about spiritual freedom?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on spiritual freedom starts with a question Brian puts to the room directly: if Jesus has genuinely set us free from sin, why do so many of us keep living like we are still in chains? Working through the Feast of Unleavened Bread and its ritual of searching out and burning every bit of leaven, Brian draws a straight line between that physical picture and what the New Testament actually claims Jesus accomplished. The leaven is sin, and Jesus did not simply cover it or look the other way. He removed it, nailed it to the cross, carried it in His body, and dealt with it once and for all. Brian pointed to the Greek behind the word in Colossians, the idea of pulling yeast out of an already-baked loaf, something no human effort can do, to press home that this is not a self-improvement project.
The gap most people feel between what Scripture says and what daily life looks like is real, and Brian does not dismiss it. Paul names the same tension in Romans 7, and people in the room named it too. Brian traces that gap back to a single tactic of the enemy: deception. His image is a fired police officer who walks back into the room still wearing the uniform. The authority is gone, but the bluff can still work if no one calls it. The same spirit that stood behind the Pharisees in Matthew 12, accusing and pressing people back into guilt and shame, is still at work telling people who are beginning to walk in freedom that they have no right to it.
The practical answer Brian keeps returning to is not trying harder but staying close to Jesus. Trying not to meditate on sin is just another way of meditating on sin, what he calls the little pink monkey strategy. What actually expands a person's capacity for freedom is time spent with Jesus that produces a transformed life. As Brian puts it, "I really don't care how much you know about Jesus. But when I see evidence that you've spent time with Jesus resulting in a transformed life, that gets my attention." The old wineskin of rule-keeping has no room left to hold what Jesus is pouring out. Freedom, at Tribe, is not a destination to achieve but a reality to rest in as a son or daughter rather than strain toward as a slave.
Taught from Colossians 2 · John 8 · Romans 7 · Galatians 5:1 · 1 Peter 2
The passage taught · 1 Peter 2
1 Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
2 as newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, that with it you may grow,
3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious:
4 coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- April 27, 2025 No Longer Slaves Brian Hunter walks through the Feast of Unleavened Bread to show why Jesus, not willpower, breaks the chains of sin and why the enemy has no real authority over you.
- January 20, 2025 Breaking the Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus stretches our capacity for freedom and breaks the grip of religious rules that have no life in them.
Mentioned along the way
- January 19, 2025 Breaking The Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus breaks the grip of religious legalism and leads to real, transformed freedom.