Acts 5

Acts 5 (Click to read)

If there is anything clear about the early church it is that it was thoroughly God-centered. Peter and the apostles’ response to the Sadducees sums up the church’s perspective well: “We must obey God rather than man.” These first Christians were deeply impassioned to bring people to salvation. They were not at all concerned whether they were popular or liked. At least it seems that if they were they wouldn’t say things like, “The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree,” which predictably elicits the Sadducees enraged desire to kill them (5:33).

In fact, it is the love of popularity that consumes Ananais and Sapphira and brings their destruction. Certainly, they were judged because they lied about the property they sold, but what drove them to lie was an obsession to appear as thriving, generous Christians. God’s response to their sin may seem harsh, but we must understand the full atrocity of their actions. What they did undermined the very heart of grace and salvation. The good news of God’s grace is that he is taking those worthy only of his condemnation and instead giving them his love. It is that Jesus dies for those who are his enemies. In other words, not being what you should be means, at least in God’s economy of grace, that you get what you don’t deserve. Not being what you should be simply means you need grace, which through Jesus is amply supplied. Pretending to be what you are not is the greatest of evils. Not only is your pretense deceit, but it is also a rejection of grace. He who pretends to be what he is not, also pretends to have no need of grace.

If you are merely concerned with being liked, the true message of grace will not be what you proclaim nor what you live. And you won’t be God-centered, for to be grace-centered is to be God-centered. I must be clear here, because I don’t think that the story of Ananais and Sapphira speaks primarily to morally loose, uncharitable hypocrites. The message is for those who have made their faith into being moral, being charitable, and even being sacrificial. But their Christianity is a Christianity about them, and what they are doing. It is not about God and what he in his grace is doing. Their faith is about appearing faithful and not about faith in Christ.