Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 5:1 - 5:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Act 5:1-11. ACCOUNT OF ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA
The narrative with which this chapter commences is one which none but a veracious narrator would have inserted where it stands. The last chapter concludes with a description of the unity of heart and soul which prevailed among the brethren, and expressly notices that all were filled with the Holy Ghost. But as among the twelve Apostles there was a Judas, so into the infant Church there had intruded two at least whose professions were not sincere, and who were unworthy of the gifts of grace which, with the rest, they had received.
We cannot but be surprised that persons like Ananias and Sapphira should have thought it worth while to act as they did. Why join the Christian community at all? Or why not leave it when they found what was required of them? But there is in some characters an innate and incorrigible duplicity. It is clear that there must have been a strong conviction of the truth of Christianity.
The offence of Ananias and Sapphira shewed contempt for God, vanity and ambition in the offenders, and utter disregard of the corruption which they were bringing into the society. Such sin, committed in despite of the light which they possessed, called for a special mark of divine indignation, and to those who, likewise filled with the Spirit, knew all that had been done and why it was done, there is no shock produced by the terrible doom of the sinners. Nor is any language employed in the narration but the simplest and plainest. A late compiled story would have enlarged and spoken apologetically on the reasons for such a judgment, and would not have presented us with a bare recital of facts without comment.