Acts 5:1-21

5:1-2 | The church did not require anyone to sell or give anything. Ananias and Sapphira wanted credit for giving a sacrificial gift without paying the price. Kept back comes from a Greek word that means “to steal, to pilfer, to embezzle”; the wording betrays what was in the couple’s heart (Titus 2:10).

5:3-4 | Ananias and Sapphira created a plan that was based on hypocrisy and deceit, and they followed through with full intent to lie to the church (Col. 3:9). They also lied to the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit can be lied to refutes the claims of some cults that the Spirit is merely an impersonal force rather than the third Person of the Trinity. While Satan cannot fill or control believers, he can do much damage in hearts that are open to temptation. When he failed to destroy the early church, he tried to infiltrate and hinder it by prompting people to live in insincere and hypocritical ways. He still uses such tactics today.

5:5&10 | Death is the ultimate form of earthly discipline for sinning believers. Even today, God sometimes uses this judgment (1 Cor. 11:30; 1 John 5:16). That said, it would be wrong to perceive of death or illness as always being diving judgment. God hates death even more than humans do – it is a tangible reminder of the Fall and that things are not now as they should be.

5:11 | Had the sin of Ananias and Sapphira been ignored, it would have corrupted all that God wanted to do in the early church, Here, the word translated fear does not describe reverence but trembling. This incident sparked both church growth and a holy fear of a holy God among the people.

5:14 | For the first time, Luke includes women in the numbers, a change from the early chapters. Women were vitally important in the early church; biblical Christianity has done much to elevate their status in the family and in the church.

5:17 | Indignation (zelos) eventually became the word jealous in English. Amid Jerusalem’s excitement at the things that were happening in the early church, the Sadducees were upset because they saw their power base being eclipsed by these upstart Christians (Matt. 3:7).

5:19 | Within the darkness of life, God remains awake and aware (Ps. 121:2-4). No prison, no suffering, no lonely desert is beyond His presence (Heb. 13:5).