Thursday
Thursday
Ananias and Sapphira
Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?
Acts 5:4
The story of the deceit and death of Ananias and Sapphira is important partly because it illustrates Luke’s honesty as a historian (he did not suppress this sordid episode) and partly because it throws light on the interior life of the early church (it was not all romance and righteousness). Several commentators have suggested a parallel between Ananias and Achan—the Achan who stole money and clothing after the destruction of Jericho. Here is F. F. Bruce’s comment: “The story of Ananias is to the Book of Acts what the story of Achan is to the Book of Joshua. In both narratives an act of deceit interrupts the victorious progress of the people of God.”
It seems that Ananias and Sapphira had conspired to commit some kind of misappropriation. But Luke concentrates rather on their hypocrisy. They brought to the apostles only a proportion of the sale of their property, while pretending to bring it all. They wanted the credit for generosity without the inconvenience of it. So they told a brazen lie. Peter saw behind their hypocrisy the subtle activity of Satan. So he confronted Ananias: “How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit? … You have not lied to men but to God” (vv. 3–4). Ananias dropped dead under the judgment of God, and so did Sapphira some three hours later.
There are at least two valuable lessons to learn from this tragic story. Firstly, we perceive the gravity of their sin. Luke records in his Gospel Jesus’s denunciation of hypocrisy. If the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira had not been publicly exposed and punished, the ideal of an open fellowship in the church would have been destroyed from the beginning.
Secondly, we learn the necessity of church discipline. The church has tended to oscillate in this area between extreme severity (disciplining members for even the most trivial offenses) and extreme laxity (exercising no discipline at all, even for the most serious offenses). It is a good general rule that secret sins should be dealt with secretly, private sins privately, and only public sins publicly.
For further reading: Acts 5:1–11