Opening Verse
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
1 Peter 2:9
A Reflection of the Reality of Truth
What would you do if the way back disappeared? When Julius Caesar’s legions landed on the shores of Britain, he marched his own men to the edge of the Cliffs of Dover and made them watch every ship they had crossed go up in flames. There was no strategy meeting about it, no vote. Caesar simply removed the option of retreat and, in doing so, removed something else too: the luxury of half-hearted commitment. What was left for his soldiers wasn’t a decision anymore. It was simply the truth of their situation: advance, or nothing.
That story is a good place to start, because many of us are living on perception rather than truth, and we don’t even notice the difference. Perception is “the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses,” which sounds harmless enough until you realize how much of it gets built for us before we ever choose anything ourselves: the home we grew up in, the school that shaped our politics before we had any of our own, the people we surrounded ourselves with. None of that is inherently wrong, but none of it is automatically true either. Seeing a woman in a raincoat doesn’t mean it’s raining.
Scripture doesn’t let us build a life on that kind of shifting ground. “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30) isn’t a perception; it’s a line drawn in reality. And nobody illustrates the difference between a perception-shaped life and a truth-shaped life better than the apostle Paul, a man who had every reason, by his own account, to trust his upbringing completely:
“Circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church… But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:4-11).
Paul’s zeal wasn’t fabricated. It was sincerely built on the traditions and perceptions of his religious upbringing, and it was sincerely wrong until truth interrupted it. Pharaoh’s court in Exodus ran the other direction and never got interrupted at all: “Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we… lest they multiply and join themselves to those who hate us” (Exodus 1:8-10). There is no record of Israel plotting against Egypt. That fear was pure perception, and an entire nation built centuries of oppression on top of it.
Our faith was never meant to rest on what we perceive. It rests on what God has revealed.
That distinction gets tested differently depending on where you live.
In an article in the Moody Monthly back in April of 1989, the author wrote,
“In Russia, Christians are tested by hardship, but in America you are tested by freedom. And testing by freedom is much harder. Nobody pressures you about your religion. So you relax and are not so concentrated on Christ” (Pavel Poloz, exiled from Russia, Moody Monthly, April 1989).
Nobody is burning our ships for us. If our commitment is going to be total, we have to be the ones who strike the match.
So what does that total commitment actually look like?
David Lloyd George put it plainly:
“The most dangerous thing in the world is trying to leap a canyon with two jumps.”
Jesus doesn’t leave room for a two-jump faith either. “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20), and that fruit shows up in specific, checkable places:
- The priority we place on the Kingdom over everything competing for it (Matthew 6:33; Ephesians 5:25).
- Our willingness to actually work for that Kingdom rather than just admire it (John 9:4; 1 Corinthians 15:58; Ephesians 4:15-16).
- The maturing of the Christian graces in daily, visible ways (2 Peter 1:5-11; Galatians 5:22-23).
- A resolve to live every day for heaven’s glory instead of this one (Philippians 1:20-23; 3:20-21).
- Continual victory over the three things most likely to sink us: self, Satan, and sin (1 Corinthians 9:27; James 4:7-8; 1 John 3:9).
This truth isn’t just ancient doctrine. It speaks directly to us:
- Perception is shaped by everything around us- upbringing, education, culture- but perception and truth are not the same thing, and Scripture only recognizes one of them.
- Sincerity isn’t enough. Paul was sincerely wrong before he was gloriously right, and it took truth interrupting his perception to make the difference.
- Fear built on false perception, not fact, is what drove Pharaoh to oppress an entire nation in Exodus.
- The hardest test of faith isn’t always persecution. Sometimes it’s the comfort of freedom, where nothing forces you to stay close to Christ.
- Total commitment to Jesus isn’t abstract. It shows up in your priorities, your willingness to work, your growth, your daily resolve, and your victories over self, Satan, and sin.
Caesar’s soldiers had no ships left to run to, only a shore to conquer. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own possession (1 Peter 2:9), and that identity was never meant to leave you an easy way back to who you were before. The only real question this reflection leaves us with is simple: what boats are you still keeping afloat, just in case?
