AFRAID OF HYPOCRISY

We like to idealize the picture of the early Christian church, a community that worshiped God and proclaimed Jesus boldly, cared for one another, shared their possessions, ate together regularly, and grew rapidly (see Acts 4:32–35). So, we are not sure what to do with the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a couple who wanted to appear generous but who succumbed to the temptation to keep some of their intended generosity for themselves.

In short, “Ananias and Sapphira practiced fraud in their dealing with God; they lied to the Holy Spirit, and their sin was visited with swift and terrible judgment.”* Despite the surrounding threats and looming persecution, great fear within the church seems a jarring contrast to the idyllic picture of the church that we like to assume.

Could the Spirit, who had so recently emboldened the believers in their proclamation of Jesus, now be responsible for this couple’s sudden deaths? The story does not fully explain why Ananias and Sapphira died, or who or what caused their deaths.

This was the kind of religiosity that Jesus warned against so many times (see, for example, Matthew 6:1–6, Matthew 23:1–36, or Luke 18:9–14).

Yet it seems that God’s hatred of hypocrisy was still underestimated. God did not want the believers or the surrounding people to be afraid of Him or the Holy Spirit. Rather, they should be afraid of the evil of hypocrisy and how such lies would destroy the church community and everything He wanted the church to become.

The witness of these early Christians would be damaged and diminished if their commitment to the community was devalued and undermined.

Like Israel before it, the church was to be a new kind of community, and the attitudes and actions that Ananias and Sapphira chose were a threat to this movement right at its beginning.

* Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press®, 1911), 72.