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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 598. The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira
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The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira
Ananias had seen what was going on around him, and he had determined that he must not be behindhand in the ministry of love. But ambition to stand well with his fellow-members evidently mingled with the pure spirit of charity, though we do not need to suppose that there was as yet any conscious intention to deceive. Acting, then, on these somewhat mixed motives of charity and ambition, Ananias determined to sell a possession, some farm or other which he had, and hand over the money to the Apostles. He probably meant at first to hand over the whole price, but with the money in his hand the demon of avarice entered into his heart. And he “kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power? How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.”
2. The peculiar sin of this pair lay here, that, being tempted by two evil things,-the love of money and the love of applause-they suffered both these unchristian passions to enter and occupy their souls, to fill them up bit by bit, driving out the love of men and the fear of God, till, grown blind and hard and reckless through sin, they plotted in cold blood to cheat the Church and lie to the face of God. Had they been covetous only, they would have kept their property; vain only, they would have given it all. In either case the motive had been a bad one, but in neither case would the offence have grown into a scandal. It was the effort to reconcile two conflicting passions, to be close and seem generous, to keep their gold yet win the credit of giving it, that betrayed these Christians into the first open and shameful breach of Christian morality. Out of the confluence of covetousness with vanity came forth a lie.
3. But they tried to play the hypocrite's part on most dangerous ground just when the Divine Spirit of purity, sincerity, and truth had been abundantly poured out, and when the spirit of deceit and hypocrisy was therefore at once recognized.
The Spirit was vouchsafed during those earliest days of the Church in a manner and style of which we hear nothing during the later years of the Apostles. He proved His presence by physical manifestations, as when the whole house was shaken where the Apostles were assembled-a phenomenon of which we read nothing in the latter portion of the Acts. By the gift of tongues, by miracles of healing, by abounding spiritual life and discernment, by physical manifestations, the most careless and thoughtless in the Christian community were compelled to feel that a supernatural power was present in their midst and resting specially upon the Apostles. Yet it was into such an atmosphere that the spirit of hypocrisy and of covetousness, the two vices to which Christianity was specially opposed, and which the great Master had specially denounced, obtruded itself as Satan gained entrance into Eden, to defile with their foul presence the chosen dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost vindicated His authority therefore, because, as it must be observed, it was not St. Peter that sentenced Ananias to death. No one may have been more surprised than St. Peter himself at the consequences which followed his stern rebuke. St. Peter merely declared his sin, “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God”; and then it is expressly said, “Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost.”
Old piety was wont to say that God's judgments tracked the footsteps of the criminal; that all violation of the eternal laws, done in the deepest recesses or on the conspicuous high places of the world, was absolutely certain of its punishment. You could do no evil, you could do no good, but a god would repay it to you. It was as certain as that when you shot an arrow from the earth, gravitation would bring it back to the earth. The all-embracing law of right and wrong was as inflexible, as sure and exact, as that of gravitation. Furies with their serpent hair and infernal maddening torches followed Orestes who had murdered his mother. In the still deeper soul of modern Christendom there hung the tremendous image of a Doomsday-Dies irœ, dies illa-when the All-just, without mercy now, with only terrific accuracy now, would judge the quick and the dead, and to each soul measure out the reward of his deeds done in the body-eternal Heaven to the good, to the bad eternal Hell.
My friend, it well behoves us to reflect how true essentially all this still is: that it continues, and will continue, fundamentally a fact in all essential particulars-its certainty, I say its infallible certainty, its absolute justness, and all the other particulars, the eternity itself included. He that has with his eyes and soul looked into nature from any point-and not merely into distracted theological, metaphysical, modern philosophical, or other cobweb representations of nature at second hand-will find this true, that only the vesture of it is changed for us; that the essence of it cannot change at all. Banish all miracles from it. Do not name the name of God; it is still true.1 [Note: Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1835, ii. 17.]
When Howe received the tidings of the terrible fire which devastated London in September, 1666, he laid to heart the lesson which he, twelve years later, delivered to London itself in the Haberdashers' Hall. “The street shall be built again, and the wall in troublous times” (Dan_9:25), was the text. “The judgments of God are audible sermons. They have a voice.” He knew something of London, and report had told him of the wild debaucheries with which the city overflowed since 1660. “That the inhabitants of London should be as it were in a conspiracy to destroy London seems very strange. And yet was not that the case?” It was useless for the citizens to be indignant against the supposed authors of the conflagration. They themselves were the true authors. Their sins brought the punishment upon their heads.1 [Note: R. F. Horton, John Howe, 79.]