Reverence for God's Church

Most of us who have purchased a home find that that house is our biggest investment, our greatest asset. We expect—we hope for—it to increase in value over time as we slowly, steadily, pay it off. We do our best to take care of it because we know how valuable it is to our quality of life as well as to our long-term financial health.

Which is why it is also surprising that many of us don’t pay too much attention to our respective neighborhood associations. Ours meets once a month, and I’ve got several good excuses why I’ve stopped attending those meetings. But even when I did, even when I was (for one year) the president of our association, I didn’t put much thought or effort into it until I was on my way to the monthly meeting.

Kind of like many Christians don’t put much thought into their church communities until it is time to go to church.

We probably should care more about the health of our neighborhood associations. We most certainly should care about the health of our church communities. Our enemy sure does. As we will see in our passage today, it is because the Christian community is where God himself resides that it becomes a target for satanic lies.

In our passage today, Luke tells a story about the internal affairs of the early church. We see the church pictured as a gracious community as well as a target for satanic attack. And the lesson we ought all to learn is why we should treat the church with a holy fear.

A Gracious Community

First, we see a picture of the early church as a radically generous and gracious community.

Here is another snapshot of the early church, a glimpse into what this very early Christian community looked like. It is another happy picture. It is very similar to the picture we saw at the end of chapter 2. There we were told that “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Here we are told that “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul” and that “they had everything in common.” There we were told that “they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” Here we are told in more detail about this particular practice of communal life and sharing that gives the idyllic image of the early church we find here in Acts.

One Heart and Soul

It begins with Luke’s observation that “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” In other words, all the believers—all those who confessed that Jesus of Nazareth is the risen and reigning Lord of heaven and earth—they were deeply unified. “They thought the same things and they wanted the same things.”[1]Or, to state it negatively, there were no serious division between them. Just imagine if that could be said of all professing Christians today!

On the one hand this would have been much, much easier there at the beginning of the Christian movement, when the “full number of those who believed” was a much smaller group than the 2.4 billion people who identify as Christians today. The larger the number became, and the more global the movement became, disunity was sure to be a regular threat. We’ll see that in Acts as well as we go along.

Luke’s picture of the early church here is no doubt meant to show us not just what it was like then but also what it ought to be like now.[2]This kind of unity among “those who believed” is something we should deeply care about, pray for, work toward. That is one reason why we pray for other churches most Sundays during our pastoral prayer, but what other ways might we promote unity with all “those who believe”?

No Needy Persons

It’s an important question to ponder, but the focus here is on the Christians in a particular location. A “local church” setting is what is in view. It’s already a large church. In Acts 1:15 there were about 120 people identified as believers. After Peter’s proclamation of Jesus as Pentecost some 3000 more were added to that number (Acts 2:41) with even more being added day by day (Acts 2:47). Earlier in this chapter we are told that the number of believers swelled to at least 5000 (Acts 4:4).

If we talk today about a church of around 5000 people, we get an image very different than the one Luke is describing for us here. We are likely to be thinking of a large, modern auditorium to hold such a sizeable crowd for an hour or so on Sunday morning, or of a church offering multiple “worship experiences” to accommodate those kinds of numbers. But the picture Luke gives us is not of some dynamic mega-church worship service or services; he is giving us the picture of a very large family.

You see, when he says in verse 32 that “no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common,” he is not suggesting that perhaps communism could be a good ideal for civil society after all. But what he is describing is what comes quite naturally to a family.

It would be inconceivable for a family to allow any of its family members to not have their basic needs met. When the family sits down to eat, you share the food on the table. When the family purchases clothes, no one goes destitute.  In a family everyone gets access to the hot water. Everyone gets a place to lie down and go to sleep with a roof over their heads.

Luke is telling us that this is how the early church began to act. They began to act like they belonged to each other as members of the same family. Because they believed that that is exactly what they were.

Testimony to the Resurrection

And they believed this because they believed in Jesus, crucified and risen. Notice verse 33. It appears to be a sudden insertion into this description of the church sharing and caring for one another. It tells us that the apostles “with great power . . . were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” No doubt the “great power” refers to the convincing evidence the apostles were delivering for the resurrection of Jesus. But the “great grace” that was upon everyone must have included this anxious-free environment in which material needs were taken care of.[3]The proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection was supplemented by the evidence of God’s grace upon this community; this power and grace found in this community marked them out as recipients of the divine blessing promised in Deuteronomy 15:4, where God said, “there will be no poor among you.”[4]

The local church cannot meet the needs of everyone in the world. Of course it is a good work for the church, just like for any family, to share what it can with others who are not part of the family. But every local church ought to take responsibility to see that none of its own members go needy.

I once attended a meeting of faith leaders with the Homeless Alliance, discussing what might be done to address the needs of the homeless population. “Here’s what you can do,” we were told. “Make sure that none of your members become homeless.”

When we in any local church begin to act like a family because we believe that that is exactly what we are, it is a powerful witness to the truth we proclaim, that Jesus has been raised from the dead and all things are becoming new.

A Satanic Attack

Now I wish that was the end of this story, but it’s not. Verses 36-37 tell us about a specific account of how one person shared his possessions with the rest of the family. But then in chapter 5 we find a disturbing account of a husband and wife who do something similar but end up dead. This is a sobering story that comes as quite a surprise to what we’ve seen so far in Acts. The gracious community, it seems, has become a target for a satanic attack.

The Example of Barnabas

First, we admire a man named Barnabas and his meritorious act. His name is actually Joseph, but the apostles called him Barnabas. That name means “son of encouragement,” we are told, though the etymology is probably “son of a prophet.”[5]The word encouragement is also used in Acts 13:15 to describe a discourse given in a synagogue. Barnabas appears to be so named because he was what we might call a preacher, and a good one at that. “Preaching” in the New Testament appears to be akin to what “prophesying” was in the Old Testament.[6]

What does Barnabas do? He “sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (v. 37). So, he is illustrative of the general point that Luke made in verses 34-35.

I don’t think those two verses tell us that everyone in the church who owned property did what Barnabas did. Barnabas is singled out because he is an example of the kind of commendatory act the wealthier members of the church ought to do whenever there is a family need.[7] Paul told Timothy to charge the rich “to be generous and ready to share” (1 Tim 6:17-18), like Barnabas did.

The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira

And now in chapter 5 there’s another couple who look like they are doing the same thing.

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 5:1-2)

It is clear from the verses that follow that Ananias and Sapphira have done something wrong, but it can be confusing to comprehend what sin they have committed here. That’s because there are at least four sins that might be found in the passage.

First, Ananias and Sapphira have committed fraud. That’s the verb Luke uses, twice in fact, and translated “to keep back for oneself.”[8]But how could it be fraud when Peter says in verse 4 that they did not have to sell the land, nor were they obligated to give the proceeds of the sale away? The simplest answer is that the couple had promised to give all the proceeds to the church.

Now verse 4 indicates that they could have changed their mind; they were not obligated to give the money away. But their gift was fraudulent because it was not authentic. They were guilty, second, of hypocrisy, of wanting to appear more generous than they were. They wanted the kind of recognition and praise that Barnabas had undoubtedly received, but it was all a fraud. They hadn’t actually sacrificed all that much for the community even though they wanted to be thought of as though they had. Jesus warned of this, of giving to the needy in order to receive the praise of others (Matt 6:2). The self-righteous motivation of hypocrisy is a poison to the church community.  

Third, Ananias and Sapphira have lied, haven’t they? It’s the specific sin mentioned in verses 3-4, where Peter says, “You have not lied to man but to God.” Of course they did lie to Peter also, as well as to the whole church community. But that’s the point: ever since Pentecost the church community is where God himself by his Spirit dwells. To lie to the church is to lie to God first and foremost.

It’s also why Peter can accuse Ananias and Sapphira of “testing the Spirit of the Lord” in verse 9, a fourth sin mentioned in the passage. “Testing God” is a particularly devilish sin, one that Satan himself tried to tempt Jesus with (Matt 4:6-7). It is the sin that Israel committed in Exodus 17, when they grumbled against God and quarreled with Moses at Rephidim. Exodus 17:7 tells us that “testing the Lord” involved the people questioning whether God was there among them or not when they had no water to drink in the wilderness. Had God brought them out of Egypt simply to let them die of thirst?

It seems like a fair question given their circumstances, but “testing the Lord” is not the same as a moment of doubt of just how God is going to come through. Testing the Lord is asking, “Is the LORD among us or not?” when his presence is manifestly obvious. It’s like asking if there’s going to be any dinner tonight when your parent or spouse is busy preparing the meal in the kitchen at that very moment.[9] Ananias and Sapphira are guilty of testing the Lord by treating the church community as “common” rather than “holy.”

A Holy Fear

And so, they die. Both of them. And a great fear came upon everyone who heard about it. Luke mentions this “great fear” twice, in verses 5 and 11, obviously wanting to stress the point. This great fear, this holy fear, is something he wants his readers to take away from this story.

A Serious Matter

Now, look, if God were to strike down every church member who has ever lied or been a hypocrite, we’d all be dead, wouldn’t we? Thank the Lord for his grace toward sinners! But we ought to read this account and see the serious matter that it sets before us rather than comforting ourselves that God doesn’t apparently do stuff like this today. Surely that would be the wrong conclusion for any Christian to make.

What happens to Ananias and Sapphira in this passage is similar to what happened to Uzzah when he reached out to steady the ark of God when it wobbled on the cart during transportation (2 Sam 6:6-7), or when Achan took some of the devoted things from Jericho and brought the whole community under God’s wrath (Josh 7), or when two of Aaron’s sons “offered unauthorized fire before the LORD” (Lev 10:1-2). In all of those cases, the immediate response to God’s judgment was shock, maybe even disgust at what seems to us to be an overreaction on God’s part.

But that’s because we have trouble comprehending the serious matter of holiness.

Portraying God

So, yes, what happens here ought to give us pause. If what happened to Ananias and Sapphira sounds extreme, then perhaps that’s because it’s meant to signal a warning to us about what the “holy catholic church” is. We are to respect God’s church, God’s family, because by doing so we are exactly respecting God himself who dwells within the church.

If the church is where we are meant to encounter God himself by his Spirit, then the kind of sacrificial care that Barnabas exemplified at the end of Acts 4 is about the kind of sacrificial care that God himself exemplifies. Why was there “not a needy person among them”? Because they were all healthy and wealthy? No prosperity gospel here. Rather, this is a sacrificial gospel, a picture of what God himself, in Christ, has done for us. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). That’s what Barnabas portrayed.

But what Ananias and Sapphira portrayed is something different. The picture of God we get from them is a God who holds back for himself, a God who is impure in his motives, insincere in his care. He might give you some things alright, but he doesn’t really care about you. He only cares about himself. He is stingy, not lavish, in his grace.

God will not tolerate being represented that way, because that is not at all who he is or what he is like.

Church Discipline Is for Disciples

And that is why Ananias and Sapphira die. It’s an act of what we might call “church discipline,” a display of apostolic authority. While Barnabas and other wealthier believers laid the proceeds of their liquidated property at the apostles’ feet, Ananias and then Sapphira fall down dead at the apostles’ feet (Acts 5:10).

Yes, God has given his own authority to his church, and he expects his church to use it. In responding to a report of blatant, public, and unrepentant sin in the Corinthian church, Paul instructed them “to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5).

Now we all know how dangerous authority can be, how abusive it can easily become. No one—and this most certainly includes church leaders—no one is ever authorized to abuse church authority. We all need to recover the holy fear Luke tells us about here, and watch out for a toxic atmosphere of legalism, self-righteousness, and spiritual abuse.

But it is no virtue in the church to just leave everyone alone, to never call out sin, to discourage confession and repentance, to have no care for spiritual formation and personal holiness. After all, it is God’s intention for everyone to know who he is by seeing who his people are, seeing what they are becoming through faith in Jesus Christ.

So, brothers and sisters, let us learn together to respect God and his church. Let us learn to treat his family, the people for whom he has given his life, with a holy fear.

Your church, your Christian community, ought to have a central place in your life, and, yes, in your calendar and your checkbook.

It isn’t your neighborhood association, though you probably should care about that, too.

_____

[1] Barclay Moon Newman and Eugene Albert Nida, A Translator's Handbook on the Acts of the Apostles, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1972), 111.

[2] Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 205.

[3] I. Howard Marshall, Acts: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, ed. Leon Morris (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 115.

[4] N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 33.

[5] C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, International Critical Commentary, ed. J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Cranfield, and G. N. Stanton (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 1:258–59.

[6]See J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God, Revised and Enlarged (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 174.

[7] Barrett, Commentary on the Acts, 1:258.

[8] Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Robert W. Yarbrough and Robert H. Stein (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 221.

[9] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, The New American Commentary, vol. 2, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 392.