What does Tribe teach about freedom from religion?
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 religion starts with a scene most people miss. Brian walked through Matthew 12:1-14 and pointed out that the disciples and the Pharisees had nearly everything in common. Same grain field, same words from Jesus, same synagogue, same miracle right in front of them. The difference was not proximity. It was posture. The disciples came hungry and poor. The Pharisees came seeing, in the way scripture uses that word to describe flesh-driven desire, and from that moment they moved through protest, accusation, and finally conspiracy. A religious spirit, Brian argued, is not just a personality type or a bad church experience. It is an active orientation against Jesus, and it can be running in someone who is standing right next to him.
To explain why the same encounter produces such opposite reactions, Brian reached for 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, where Paul describes the knowledge of Christ as a fragrance that smells like life to those being saved and like death to those who are perishing. He used the feedlot smell of Greeley, Colorado to land the point: everyone smells the same thing, but what it registers as depends entirely on who you are and what you are oriented toward. The hard heart the Pharisees carried is not a passive condition. It is the functional equivalent of indifference, and Brian was direct that indifference is a slow version of what verse 14 describes. As he put it, "You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus."
The place the teaching lands hardest is Matthew 21:44, where Jesus says that anyone who stumbles over the stone will be broken to pieces, and that the stone will crush anyone it falls on. Brian held that verse up and asked the room to find a third option in it. There is none. You can fall on the rock willingly and be broken and rebuilt on your own terms, which is what surrender looks like, or the rock eventually falls on you. Freedom from religion, in this teaching, is not about leaving something behind. It is about which direction you fall toward Jesus.
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 · Matthew 21:44 · Hosea 6:6 · Luke 21:1-4
“You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus.”
From Smell Something
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place.
15 For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;
16 to the one a stench from death to death; to the other a sweet aroma from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 27, 2025 Smell Something Brian Hunter preaches on Matthew 12, asking why two groups witnessed the same Jesus and walked away so differently, and why there is no neutral response to him.
- January 26, 2025 Shhhh! Smell Something? Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show why two groups can witness the same miracle and walk away with opposite reactions to Jesus, and why neutrality is not an option.