Digging Deeper for such a time as this: ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.—Acts 5:1, 2. TO understand fully the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, the two previous chapters must be carefully read. Persecution had driven the members of the Church closer to God and to one another; opposition had, in fact, become a source of strength and a crown of honour. The first result and marvellous proof of that oneness was the so-called “community of goods.” The chief way in which at that time a member of the Church expressed his unshaken devotion to the common cause, or his willingness to sacrifice to the last penny for the common weal, was by placing his realized capital at the disposal of the brotherhood. The endangered position of the little community thus tended to inflame the fervour of its charity, and gave a new impetus to that common relief fund which had been started at Pentecost. Many of the poorer converts, on joining the Christian community, would lose all help from Jewish sources, but so heartily did the richer members care for their needs that none were left destitute or in want. There is nothing of modern communism in all this, but there is a lesson to the modern Church as to the obligations of wealth and the claims of brotherhood, which is all but universally disregarded. The spectre of communism is troubling every nation, and it will become more and more formidable, unless the Church learns that the only way to lay it is to live by the precepts of Jesus and to repeat in new forms the spirit of the primitive Church. The Christian sense of stewardship, not the abolition of the right of property, is the cure for the hideous facts which drive men to shriek, “Property is theft.” The wealthy part of the Church was no doubt made up of two classes: men who were full of the new spirit, and so hearty in the cause of Jesus that they were forward of their own accord to put all they had into the Church treasury, in order that no lover of Jesus might lack; and men honest enough in their belief, only less enthusiastic or generous, who gave, partly indeed from goodwill, but partly also through the force of example or the fear of censure. To whatever extent this latter class existed, it formed a dangerous element. When high-pitched virtue becomes a fashion, men learn to pay to it the homage of hypocrisy. Of these two classes the writer of the Book of Acts presents us with individual examples—of the former class, in the case of Joseph, or Barnabas, a wealthy Cypriot, who “having a field, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet”; of the latter, in the case of Ananias with Sapphira his wife, whose melancholy story is now before us. ¶ Each of us is not only God’s workman, but His steward. He has a duty of distribution as well as of accumulation laid upon him. God expects every man to have bestowed so much as well as laboured so much before his time comes. I THE SIN OF ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA 1. “The corruption of the best becomes the worst”: so says the proverb, and in the story of the sin of Ananias and Sapphira we have abundant corroboration of its truth. For both must, in the first instance at any rate, have been of a sufficiently generous character. Ananias had seen what was going on around him, and he had determined that he must not be behindhand in the ministry of love. But ambition to stand well with his fellow-members evidently mingled with the pure spirit of charity, though we do not need to suppose that there was as yet any conscious intention to deceive. Acting, then, on these somewhat mixed motives of charity and ambition, Ananias determined to sell a possession, some farm or other which he had, and hand over the money to the Apostles. He probably meant at first to hand over the whole price, but with the money in his hand the demon of avarice entered into his heart. And he “kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power? How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.” 2. The peculiar sin of this pair lay here, that, being tempted by two evil things,—the love of money and the love of applause—they suffered both these unchristian passions to enter and occupy their souls, to fill them up bit by bit, driving out the love of men and the fear of God, till, grown blind and hard and reckless through sin, they plotted in cold blood to cheat the Church and lie to the face of God. Had they been covetous only, they would have kept their property; vain only, they would have given it all. In either case the motive had been a bad one, but in neither case would the offence have grown into a scandal. It was the effort to reconcile two conflicting passions, to be close and seem generous, to keep their gold yet win the credit of giving it, that betrayed these Christians into the first open and shameful breach of Christian morality. Out of the confluence of covetousness with vanity came forth a lie. 3. But they tried to play the hypocrite’s part on most dangerous ground just when the Divine Spirit of purity, sincerity, and truth had been abundantly poured out, and when the spirit of deceit and hypocrisy was therefore at once recognized. The Spirit was vouchsafed during those earliest days of the Church in a manner and style of which we hear nothing during the later years of the Apostles. He proved His presence by physical manifestations, as when the whole house was shaken where the Apostles were assembled—a phenomenon of which we read nothing in the latter portion of the Acts. By the gift of tongues, by miracles of healing, by abounding spiritual life and discernment, by physical manifestations, the most careless and thoughtless in the Christian community were compelled to feel that a supernatural power was present in their midst and resting specially upon the Apostles. Yet it was into such an atmosphere that the spirit of hypocrisy and of covetousness, the two vices to which Christianity was specially opposed, and which the great Master had specially denounced, obtruded itself as Satan gained entrance into Eden, to defile with their foul presence the chosen dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost vindicated His authority therefore, because, as it must be observed, it was not St. Peter that sentenced Ananias to death. No one may have been more surprised than St. Peter himself at the consequences which followed his stern rebuke. St. Peter merely declared his sin, “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God”; and then it is expressly said, “Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost.” ¶ Old piety was wont to say that God’s judgments tracked the footsteps of the criminal; that all violation of the eternal laws, done in the deepest recesses or on the conspicuous high places of the world, was absolutely certain of its punishment. You could do no evil, you could do no good, but a god would repay it to you. It was as certain as that when you shot an arrow from the earth, gravitation would bring it back to the earth. The all-embracing law of right and wrong was as inflexible, as sure and exact, as that of gravitation. Furies with their serpent hair and infernal maddening torches followed Orestes who had murdered his mother. In the still deeper soul of modern Christendom there hung the tremendous image of a Doomsday—Dies irœ, dies illa—when the All-just, without mercy now, with only terrific accuracy now, would judge the quick and the dead, and to each soul measure out the reward of his deeds done in the body—eternal Heaven to the good, to the bad eternal Hell. My friend, it well behoves us to reflect how true essentially all this still is: that it continues, and will continue, fundamentally a fact in all essential particulars—its certainty, I say its infallible certainty, its absolute justness, and all the other particulars, the eternity itself included. He that has with his eyes and soul looked into nature from any point—and not merely into distracted theological, metaphysical, modern philosophical, or other cobweb representations of nature at second hand—will find this true, that only the vesture of it is changed for us; that the essence of it cannot change at all. Banish all miracles from it. Do not name the name of God; it is still true. ¶ When Howe received the tidings of the terrible fire which devastated London in September, 1666, he laid to heart the lesson which he, twelve years later, delivered to London itself in the Haberdashers’ Hall. “The street shall be built again, and the wall in troublous times” (Dan. 9:25), was the text. “The judgments of God are audible sermons. They have a voice.” He knew something of London, and report had told him of the wild debaucheries with which the city overflowed since 1660. “That the inhabitants of London should be as it were in a conspiracy to destroy London seems very strange. And yet was not that the case?” It was useless for the citizens to be indignant against the supposed authors of the conflagration. They themselves were the true authors. Their sins brought the punishment upon their heads. II SAPPHIRA 1. A sin which two have arranged is worse than one done singly, for there have been two consciences stifled, and, instead of love warning its dear one against defilement, it plunges both object and subject in the mire. And Sapphira was “privy to it”—it was a sad revelation of domestic as well as of Church life. They had land. It was very striking indeed that any member of the original Church should have any land at all. It is one thing for a man to have a few coins in his hand, and another to have property in the soil—the soil you cannot burn, the soil that is always there. Ananias and Sapphira, it may be suggested, were perhaps the best-to-do people in the neighbourhood: “They sold a possession.” Hear them talking the case over! They said when they saw all the pieces of silver lying before them, “Really this is too much; I think so: do you concur with me?” And Sapphira said, “Yes.” Here in the Church a man and his wife put their heads together to cheat the Cross, to rob the Holy Ghost! ¶ When or wherein the soul is brought but to parley with an objection, then and therein unbelief is at work, whether it be as unto a particular fact or as unto our state. It was so with our first parents in the very entry of their treaty with Satan, in giving a considering audience unto that one question, “Hath God said so?” Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” to tempt him withal, he did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire, though he was fully assured that after all he could despise and trample upon the offer, and him that made it; but instantly, without stay, he cries, “Get thee hence, Satan.” 2. One can fancy the awed silence that fell on the congregation, and the restrained, mournful movement that ran through it when Sapphira entered. Why the two had not come in company can only be conjectured. Perhaps the husband had gone straight to the Apostles after completing the sale, and had left the wife to follow at her convenience. Perhaps she had not intended to come at all, but had become alarmed at the delay in Ananias’ return. She may have come in fear that something had gone wrong, and that fear would be increased by her not seeing her husband in her quick glance round the company. If she came expecting to receive applause, the silence and constraint that hung over the assembly must have stirred a fear that something terrible had happened, which would be increased by Peter’s question. It was a merciful opportunity given her to separate herself from the sin and the punishment; but her lie was glib, and indicated determination to stick to the fraud. That moment was heavy with her fate, and she knew it not; but she knew that she had the opportunity of telling the truth, and she did not take it. She had to make the hard choice which we have sometimes to make, to be true to some sinful bargain or be true to God, and she chose the worse part. Which of the two was tempter and which was tempted matters little. Like many a wife, she thought that it was better to be loyal to her husband than to God, and so her honour was “rooted in dishonour,” and she was falsely true and truly false. ¶ The following poem, entitled “A Wife’s Farewell to her Husband Going to the Front,” shows how honour may be chosen and become the highest loyalty on the part of the wife:— How can I let thee go!—and how So bear myself as to conceal The pang of grief to which I bow, Only my love and pride reveal. How can I let thee go! and yet I would not bid thee stay. Ah! no, The claims of honour to forget, The call of duty to forego. Go forth, encompassed by my love, Which many waters cannot drown. May angels guard thee from above, And God Most High defend His own. III THE PUNISHMENT 1. Scripture authority, including that of our Lord Himself, represents man as set betwixt a twofold world of invisible moral influences. The heart of man is as it were a little city or fortress on the borderland between two nations at war with each other, and liable to be captured by whichever at that point proves itself the stronger. “Why hath Satan filled thy heart?” There is a real, malign Tempter, who can pour evil affections and purposes into a man’s heart. But he cannot do it unless the man opens his heart, as that “why?” implies. The same thought of our cooperation and concurrence, so that, however Satan suggests, it is we who are guilty, comes out in the second question, “How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart?” Reverently we may venture to say not only that Christ stands at the door and knocks, but that the enemy of Him and His stands there too, and he too enters “if any man open the door.” ¶ Watts—the man of that aggressive nineteenth century—had many wild thoughts, but there was one thought that never even for an instant strayed across his burning brain. He never once thought, “Why should I understand the cat, any more than the cat understands me?” He never thought, “Why should I be just to the merits of a Chinaman, any more than a pig studies the mystic virtues of a camel?” He affronted heaven and the angels, but there was one hard arrogant dogma that he never doubted, that he himself was as central and as responsible as God. ¶ It is told of the child of a famous painter that, from want of due repression and discipline, he gave way from time to time to paroxysms of violent and vindictive rage, and that in one of these furious moods he kicked and spat at his father. Soon afterwards, downcast and remorseful, he drew near and made his humble confession, “Father, the devil told me to kick you; the spitting was my own idea.” 2. With the final fate of Ananias and Sapphira we have nothing whatever to do. Only the time, the place, and the manner of their death were meant for the teaching of the Church—as a protest that the Holy Ghost is in her, and as a warning against hypocrisy. To be false in their hearts, and to thrust this falsehood into their religious worship and pretended service of God in His Church, was the offence for which they died. The terrible severity of the punishment can be understood only by remembering the importance of preserving the young community from corruption at the very beginning. Unless the vermin are cleared from the springing plant, it will not grow. As Achan’s death warned Israel at the beginning of their entrance into the promised land, so Ananias and Sapphira perished that all generations of the Church might fear to pretend to self-surrender while cherishing its opposite, and might feel that they have to give account to One who knows the secrets of the heart, and counts nothing as given if anything is surreptitiously kept back. ¶ The theory of the vow of poverty in the Church took its rise very much from the history of Ananias and Sapphira. That story had a deeper meaning than being a mere lie—it was sacrilege. There was a profession of charity to the Church not kept; an attempt to cheat the Holy Spirit that was in the Church, by vowing more than they meant to perform. St. Peter accepted the vow, but examined them on its sincerity. ¶ Begin thoroughly. It is a thousand times easier to live altogether for Christ than half for Christ. Don’t be an amphibian, half in one world, half in another. Be men, through and through, men in Christ Jesus. - from: Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1916).The Greater Men and Women of the Bible: St. Luke-Titus. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 06:29:58 +0000