We human beings are an amazingly inconsistent people. How frightening it can be for us to step beyond the line after which there is no return. How much we want to leave ourselves a backup option, an alternate runway...
We human beings are an amazingly inconsistent people. How frightening it can be for us to step beyond the line after which there is no return. How much we want to leave ourselves a backup option, an alternate runway... In everyday life this may work, but spiritually, as today's story about Ananias and Sapphira shows, it does not. And now it is fairly easy to understand what was wrong with Ananias's "worldly wisdom"; how much more in that time, when the will of God was not sought but simply known and seen within oneself, because the Spirit filled them.
This story was practically the first serious attempt by the devil, as we now understand it a completely useless attempt, to take revenge for the Resurrection. He had already tried to destroy the very young Church from the outside through those same Pharisees and scribes so dear to him. Through those whom Christ also accuses of inconsistency. After all, if they had loved and relied on the Lord with all their soul and had been sincere to the end in their faith, including their faith in the words of Moses, then "you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me" (John 5:46). But for them, as for all of us, it is more convenient to choose how and what to believe from what is offered, and what to leave to our own judgment.
Still, God won again. Now the evil one is trying to collapse from within the building founded by his enemy. Yet we know that "the gates of hell shall never prevail" against the Church (see Matt. 16:18), even now, when in many ways it is weaker than the community of the first apostles. And then, in the times described in the first several chapters of Acts, the Lord's power was so clearly upon His faithful that a person who allowed not the Spirit of the Lord but the spirit of the evil one to enter him, while also claiming a share in salvation, simply could not survive. It was so physically impossible for sin to remain before the face of God. Unfortunately, we manage to do that now...
5
5:1 But a certain man named Ananias - It is certain, not a believer, for all that believed were of one heart and of one soul: probably not baptized; but intending now to offer himself for baptism.
5:2 And bringing a certain part - As if it had been the whole: perhaps saying it was so.
5:3 To lie to the Holy Ghost - Who is in us. And to keep back - Here was the first instance of it. This was the first attempt to bring propriety of goods into the Christian Church.
5:4 While it remained, did it not remain thine? - It is true, whosoever among the Christians (not one excepted) had houses or lands, sold them, and laid the price at the feet of the apostles. But it was in his own choice to be a Christian or not: and consequently either to sell his land, or keep it.And when it was sold, was it not in thy power? - For it does not appear that he professed himself a Christian when he sold it.Why hast thou conceived this thing in thy heart? - So profanely to dissemble on so solemn an occasion? Thou hast not lied to men only, but to God also. Hence the Godhead of the Holy Ghost evidently appears: since lying to him, Act 5:3, is lying to God.
5:5 And Ananias fell down and expired - And this severity was not only just, considering that complication of vain glory, covetousness, fraud, and impiety, which this action contained: but it was also wise and gracious, as it would effectually deter any others from following his example. It was likewise a convincing proof of the upright conduct of the apostles, in managing the sums with which they were intrusted; and in general of their Divine mission. For none can imagine that Peter would have had the assurance to pronounce, and much less the power to execute such a sentence, if he had been guilty himself of a fraud of the same kind; or had been belying the Holy Ghost in the whole of his pretensions to be under his immediate direction.
5:7 About the space of three hours - How precious a space! The woman had a longer time for repentance.
5:8 If ye sold the land for so much - Naming the sum.
5:10 The Church - This is the first time it is mentioned: and here is a native specimen of a New Testament Church; which is a company of men, called by the Gospel, grafted into Christ by baptism, animated by love, united by all kind of fellowship, and disciplined by the death of Ananias and Sapphira.