What does Tribe teach about full reward?

At Tribe, the teaching on full reward starts with a single verse. Brian Hunter has built an entire series around 2 John 1:8, where John tells believers to watch out and stay diligent so they receive their full reward. Brian's first move is to press on the grammar: if a full reward is possible, so is a partial one, and so is none at all. This is not a conversation about whether a person is saved. The Protestant church, he has said, has done important work pushing back on the idea that salvation can be earned, but in doing so has largely let the theme of reward go unpreached. The way Brian puts it: you do not work to be saved, you work because you are saved, and that work earns reward.

The shape of that reward comes from 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, where Paul pictures every believer's life work tested as though by fire. Gold, silver, and precious stones survive. Wood, hay, and straw burn. Brian ties that fire to the image of Jesus in Revelation, eyes like flames, and says the Bema Seat is not a courtroom but something closer to a winner's podium. What survives the gaze of Jesus is what reward is based on. The reward itself, Brian says, looks like honor, victory, and increased responsibility in the reign of Jesus, and the New Testament symbol that holds it all together is a crown, not a jeweled royal crown but a laurel wreath of olive leaves placed on an Olympic victor. Psalm 139:16 and Ephesians together make the case that God has already written a specific calling for each person, and reward at that judgment is proportional to how closely a person's life lined up with what God had already planned.

One thread that keeps surfacing in the teaching is the difference between identity, calling, and gifting. Brian describes dead works, drawing on Hebrews 6:1, as works that have no life in them because they did not come from God's life in us. A person can be genuinely gifted at something, use it entirely for their own advancement, and stand before God with nothing that survives the fire. The goal of the whole series, as Brian has framed it, is summed up in what he says he wants for every person in the room: "I want you to receive a full reward so that you will have more to lay back at his feet."

Taught from 2 John 1:8 · 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 · Psalm 139:16 · Revelation 22:12 · Hebrews 6:1