What does Tribe teach about grace vs works?
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 grace versus works starts with a straightforward claim: the climb is impossible. When Brian Hunter worked through Ephesians 2 and Romans 10, he kept returning to the same point, that right standing with God is not something a person earns or achieves. Every religious system humans have invented asks people to climb their way up to God. Jesus says the hard work is already finished, and that is precisely what makes the offer so wide open. The law, Brian explained using the image of an x-ray machine, was never designed to fix anything. It reveals the condition of the human heart the way an x-ray reveals a break, but it does not heal it. Jesus fulfilled the law completely, and then, as Brian put it, ran the race and placed his first-place medal around our necks.
The practical tension the teaching keeps pressing on is why this is so hard to live out even when a person agrees with it theologically. People in the room named the quicksand picture, that the more you struggle in your own strength, the further down you go. Brian connected that to Paul's warning in Galatians 5 not to get tied up again in a yoke of slavery, which he translated loosely as: don't fall for the rage bait. The old nature will poke at you to get a reaction, and that reaction pulls a person back into trying to manufacture right standing through their own effort. Doing something out of freedom and doing something out of a performance mindset can look identical from the outside, which is what makes pride so difficult to catch.
The hinge the teaching keeps coming back to is humility. Drawing from James 4:6, Brian says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." That one sentence holds both sides at once. Pride keeps a person on the outside trying to earn their way in. Brian put it plainly: "Humility is the key that unlocks the doors of God's grace." And once that door opens, the offer on the other side is as wide as it gets, not because every path leads there, but because the one path is genuinely open to anyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
Taught from Ephesians 2:4-10 · Galatians 5:1-6 · Romans 10:9-13 · James 4:6 · 1 John 1:9
“Humility is the key that unlocks the doors of God's grace.”
From You're Not Being Inclusive, Jesus.
The passage taught · Ephesians 2:4-10
4 But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus;
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 17, 2026 You're Not Being Inclusive, Jesus. Brian Hunter preaches on John 14:6 at an outdoor service, exploring why Jesus gets canceled for claiming to be the only way to God, and what that means for everyone.
- July 5, 2026 Land of The Free, Home of The Brave A July 4th sermon from Jackson Hole on Galatians 5, exploring what it really means to live free in Christ rather than striving to earn what Jesus already gave.