Acts 5:1–11: Ananias and Sapphira
Passage
There have been some mentions lately in Acts—especially in the last passage—whereby the early Christians have been sharing their possessions with one another, but in this passage we get a negative example.
A man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira sell a piece of property, and then bring some of the money to lay it “at the apostles’ feet1” (verse 2), keeping the rest for themselves. Based on Peter’s response (which we’ll get to momentarily), it seems that Ananias and Sapphira are trying to make it seem like they’re giving all of the money to the community.
But the Holy Spirit knows what’s happening, and therefore Peter also knows through the Holy Spirit:
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” (verses 3–4)
When he hears this, Ananias falls down dead, and everyone who hears about it is seized by fear.
One person who didn’t hear about it, however, is Sapphira. After Ananias has been taken out and buried, she arrives, and Peter tests her:
And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” (verses 8–9)
So she also dies, and it is mentioned again that the whole Church, upon hearing of these events, is seized by fear.
Thoughts
My first thought is that I feel kind of bad for Ananias and Sapphira for being vilified for 2,000 years for something that is, let’s face it, much less sinful than many acts committed by many Christians since! I think that’s partially the point, that no sins are so small that the Spirit isn’t aware of them, but I still feel a little bad for them. I myself have done worse things, but people won’t be reading about (and vilifying) me for thousands of years. Praise God.
Aside from that my main thoughts on this passage are kind of building on each other:
- Whose money was it?
- Why did Ananias and Sapphira lie about it?
- Why were they punished?
But there’s also a quick point on the Holy Spirit and the Trinity after that…
Whose Money Was It?
So the first question to ask is: whose money was this? Ananias and Sapphira sold the field; did the money belong to them, or did it belong to the community? The way I read some of Peter’s words—“While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?”—I think it’s clear that the money belonged to Ananias and Sapphira. Yes, the disciples at this point are sharing their possessions with one another, but it’s voluntary, not compulsory.
You have some property and want to sell it, and keep the profits for yourself? Go ahead! It’s your property—it’s your profit! I mean, yes, we should recognize that everything we have is a gift from God, and ultimately it belongs to Him, but the Apostles aren’t trying to force that mindset onto the early Church. On a practical level, if you have some money it’s yours, and you can decide to give it to the Church or you can decide not to give it to the Church. A lot of people did; Ananias and Sapphira said they were doing it too, though they were only giving in part.
So the sin in this passage wasn’t the withholding of the money; as far as Peter is concerned the money belonged to Ananias and Sapphira to do with as they wanted. The sin was trying to fool people into thinking that they had given all of the money to the Church, when they had only given part of it.
Why the Lie?
Which brings us to the next point: why did they lie about it? The text doesn’t give precise reasons, but based on the overall passage we can infer that they were sinful reasons; it’s not that Ananias and Sapphira had a sick child and they needed to keep some of the money to keep the child alive, but God came and said, “Oh no you don’t, I want it all!”
But as for the specific reasons, I’ve always assumed (and still do) that it was for prosaic reasons. I think they just wanted the credit for doing something good—“Wow, they gave all of the profits to the Church, how noble!”—while also showing a lack of faith in God by keeping some of the money for themselves. And I characterize it as a lack of faith because I see them holding onto some of that money as a kind of insurance policy: “Sure, we trust in God, but… what if He fails us? We should have some money set aside, just in case…”
Most of us will never find ourselves in a situation like this one, where we have a pile of money, choose to give some of it to the Church, and are tempted to exaggerate about how much we gave. But almost all of us will find ourselves in the situation where we give less then we could, because of a lack of faith; because of that little voice in our heads that says that faith in God is all well and good, but faith in God plus a nest egg is even better.
Why the Punishment?
Maybe the most interesting thing to me about this passage is that it exists at all! Why were they punished in this way?
To my knowledge it’s unique in all of the Church’s history. Admittedly my knowledge of Church history is close to nonexistent, but I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing a commentary on this passage saying that this is just like some other time where someone lied about being charitable and was struck dead.
It’s also one of those passages that a non-believer could look at and say that God is being inconsistent: He didn’t punish the religious leaders who crucified Jesus, but He struck dead two people for lying? (I only say “non-believer” because the believer’s going in assumption on reading any passage should be that God is Holy, good, loving, omniscient, unchanging, and a bunch of other attributes besides, so it’s not like He forgot to act in some cases and then remembered to act (or overreact) in others. We can and should try to understand what’s going on, but with underlying assumptions about who God is.)
So why the seemingly harsh punishment for the seemingly trivial sin?
One answer I’ve heard in the past is that miracles in the Bible tend to be clumped around significant events—e.g. Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Elijah & Elisha trying to get Israelite kings to come back to worshipping God properly, here in Acts where the Holy Spirit has come and the Church is first starting—and that this is part of the Holy Spirit acting in power in the early Church. We don’t see people being struck down for their sins in this way anymore because we don’t see a lot of the miracles that were performed in Acts anymore.
The ESV Study Bible notes have some other thoughts on it:
Peter informed Sapphira of her impending death before it happened; the note of divine judgment is unmistakable. The text does not give enough information to know if Ananias and Sapphira were “false” believers or if they truly belonged to the Lord despite their egregious sin. One could view the event as God’s removal from the young Christian community of the distrust and disunity provoked by the couple’s dishonesty. It was a time when the Spirit was especially present in the community, blessing it with unity of fellowship (4:32) and the power of miracles (5:12–16). That same power brought judgment to those who by their actions denied this unity and power. Satan (v. 3) was no match for the Holy Spirit.
(On the point about whether Ananias and Sapphira were genuine believers or not, I always made the assumption that they were—in fact, I kind of feel like this punishment wouldn’t have come to non-believers—but this is not an evidence-based belief that I’d defend vigorously, and could easily have my mind swayed. It’s just the assumption I’ve always made.)
There is also the idea that God might be sending a message to the early Church with this act: there has been a lot of teaching about the forgiveness of God, and that Jesus has paid for all of our sins; perhaps the early disciples were going too far with these ideas, and believing that they didn’t need to be righteous themselves? “We can do whatever we want because Jesus has it covered” kind of a thing? Whereas the Holy Spirit is showing them that, no, even your small sins are important, and nothing is hidden from Him.
The short answer is that I don’t know why God chose to punish these people in this way, at this one moment in time.
The Trinity
One interesting point to note in Peter’s speech to Ananias
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit …? … You have not lied to man but to God.”
As far as Peter is concerned, lying to the Holy Spirit is lying to God; lying to God is lying to the Holy Spirit.
I read the phrase “put it at the apostles’ feet” as being a figure of speech for delivering it to the Apostles to use for the Church. Maybe I’m stating the obvious when I point this out… ↩︎
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