What does Tribe teach about freedom from past?
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 freedom from the past starts with a single image from John 11. Brian used the raising of Lazarus to show that when Jesus calls someone to life, the problem is not whether they are alive. The problem is that they can walk out of the tomb still wrapped in grave clothes that belong on a dead person. As Brian says, "Only dead people belong in grave clothes." The grave clothes were put on Lazarus after he died, not before, because they would have been completely out of place on someone living. That is the picture he kept returning to: shame, condemnation, the feeling of being a failure or damaged goods, the pull back into old patterns. Those things only make sense on someone who is still dead, and anyone who has invited Jesus in is not dead anymore.
Brian was careful about what changes at salvation and what does not. The heart and spirit become a new creation, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, and the old life is gone. But the mind does not get automatically rewritten in that same moment. Romans 12:2 says the mind has to be renewed, and Brian described that as ongoing work. The neural pathways and old patterns do not disappear overnight, which is part of why the world and the enemy keep pressing those old grave clothes back onto people who are already alive in Christ. Brian says, "This world constantly tries to put those old grave clothes back on us."
The practical answer he pointed to comes from Romans 6, where Paul calls believers to consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. The word Brian kept returning to was consider, the deliberate act of speaking the truth over yourself rather than agreeing with whatever voice is calling you a failure or telling you that you have gone too far this time. Like Lazarus, who could not unwrap himself and needed the people around him to act, this is not always something a person does alone. But the starting point is recognizing that the grave clothes do not belong anymore.
Taught from John 11:11-44 · 2 Corinthians 5:17 · Romans 6:6-11 · Romans 12:2 · John 8:36
“Only dead people belong in grave clothes.”
From Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside the Tomb
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- April 29, 2024 Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside the Tomb A Wyoming pastor walks through John 11, asking why alive people keep wearing grave clothes, and inviting the congregation to step out of old patterns and shame.
- April 28, 2024 Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside of the Tomb A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole explore John 11 and ask why so many Christians who have been made new still walk around wrapped in the grave clothes of guilt and shame.