What does Tribe teach about identity in christ?
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 identity in Christ starts with a single, non-negotiable premise: only the creator has the authority to define his creation. Brian Hunter returns to this ground again and again because so many people have had false names written over them by the world, by failure, by fear, and by the enemy. The question he keeps pressing the congregation to sit with is a simple one: if you looked at the sole of the boot of your heart, whose name would be written there? Drawing from Judges 6, he showed how God addressed Gideon as a mighty man of valor before Gideon had done a single thing to earn it. The things Gideon believed about himself were true at one level, but God was operating at a higher level of truth, the way lift overrides gravity without gravity stopping. God's word over a person is not a pep talk built on their resume. It is the creator naming what he made.
Brian is careful to separate identity from calling, from gifts, and from ministry, because collapsing them into one blurry idea makes it hard to hear any of them clearly. Identity comes first. Before a person can know what they were born to do, they need to know who God says they are. That identity is marked and secured by the Holy Spirit, who takes up residence inside a believer at the moment of faith. Ephesians 1:13-14 describes the Spirit as the seal and deposit of an inheritance, the name written in Sharpie on the tag of a child's jacket. Brian puts it this way: where the enemy wants to suppress the image of God in a person, God wants to highlight and develop the particular way that person was made. As Brian says, "You are God's unique poem. The stated goal of the enemy is to scribble and scratch that out."
The enemy's remaining weapon, after the cross, is deception. He works from the outside, through confusion and lies, trying to paste his own labels over what God has already written. The labels the world offers, not good enough, failure, broken, damaged goods, too much, stuck, are graffiti on something that was carefully made. The congregation at Tribe is taught to recognize that tactic and to come back, again and again, to what is already settled: they are children of God, and that is what they actually are, not a title being worked toward but a present reality to be received and lived from.
Taught from 1 John 3:1-3 · Judges 6:11-16 · Ephesians 1:3-14 · Isaiah 29:16 · Romans 8:15
“Failure to have right thinking about Israel will result in either blatant or inadvertent antisemitism.”
From Israel Is Always on God's Heart
The passage taught · Isaiah 49:16
16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. your walls are continually before me.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- January 19, 2026 Israel Is Always on God's Heart Brian Hunter opens a new series on Israel, exploring why Scripture returns to this subject 3,500 times and what that means for how we understand God's heart.
- July 28, 2025 Sealed and Branded Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Ephesians 1:13-14, exploring what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and why that identity matters more than any label the world puts on you.
- July 27, 2025 His Name Your Boot: Week 2 A Jackson Hole pastor leads his congregation through Ephesians 1 to explore what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and to live as God's own.
- July 21, 2025 What Great Love Brian Hunter asks a simple question: if someone looked at the sole of your heart's boot, whose name would they find written there?
- July 20, 2025 His Name on Your Boot A Jackson Hole pastor walks through 1 John 3:1-3 and asks one question: whose name is written on the sole of your heart's boot?
Mentioned along the way
- May 24, 2026 Your Calling: The Clue of the Callus A Wyoming pastor walks through Judges 6 and other Bible stories to help listeners discover their God-given calling and tell it apart from identity, gifts, and job.
- May 18, 2026 Identity Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6 to show how God named Gideon a mighty warrior before he had done anything, and what that means for how we see ourselves.
- January 11, 2026 Know Your Roots A sermon from Tribe Church in Jackson Hole on Ephesians 3:12-19, exploring what it means to be rooted in Christ and where we tend to sink our roots instead.
- May 5, 2025 The Feast of First Fruits Brian Hunter walks through the Feast of First Fruits and shows how Jesus rising from the dead as the firstborn of a great coming resurrection changes everything about how we live now.
- April 28, 2025 The Feast of Unleavened Bread Brian Hunter teaches Tribe through the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread and what it means to be truly free from sin, not just intellectually, but in daily life.
- 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.
- December 8, 2024 Anointed to Untangle Brian Hunter preaches on anointing, royal identity, and what it means to carry God's presence into brokenness, drawing from Exodus 30 and Isaiah 32.
- May 22, 2023 Fighting in Sauls Armor Brian Hunter walks through 1 Samuel 17 and asks why so many people try to fight their real battles wearing armor that was never made for them.