NOTES for Act 5:1-16
Against the background of the spiritual rise of the first Christian community, the episode with Ananias and Sapphira looks like something wild and frightening. Meanwhile, it reflects the fact that closeness to God is not only a great happiness, but also a great risk. If a person is only at the very beginning of a religious search, then his mistakes and wanderings do not yet lead to catastrophe, while for a person who has known God, such things are no longer permissible. Compare: it is one thing when an unfamiliar vendor at the market cheats us, and another when a beloved person betrays us. If a person has already consecrated, already given his whole life to God, and suddenly it turns out that all this was a fiction, that all this can be renounced, then this life consecrated to God loses all meaning, and the person dies...