Acts 4:32Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Do you see how, together with the grace of God, they were also distinguished by their own virtues? Everywhere one must observe that, together with God's grace, they showed their own virtues, as Peter also said: "Silver and gold I do not have" (Acts 3:6). What he said above, in the words "all who believed were together" (Acts 2:44), he expresses again here: "the multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul." After saying that they were heard, he then speaks also of their virtue, since he is about to begin the account of Sapphira and Ananias. Therefore, wishing to show their transgression, he first speaks of the virtue of the others. But tell me: did love beget non-possession, or did non-possession beget love?

If, in coming to God, many souls by the gift of love become one soul, and many hearts become one heart, then what does the very source of love do in the Father and the Son? Is not the Trinity there still more one God? Therefore, if the love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us makes many souls one soul, and many hearts one heart, how much more are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one God, one light, and one beginning?

Nothing that has been given to each on loan should be regarded as one's own property, or managed according to one's own will. Rather, one must care diligently for everything as belonging to the Master. Nothing should be neglected, even among what has been left unnoticed or disregarded, if such a thing occurs. Nor should one consider it to be under one's own authority. Rather, one must care for everything as given by God for service to brethren of one mind, and fulfill this service, each in his own order (1 Cor 15:23). Experience is necessary in order to distinguish the one who is truly in need from the one who asks only out of greed. Whoever gives to one in need gives to the Lord and will receive a reward from Him. But another throws something to every dog that runs past, because of its importunate shamelessness, not from compassion for its need.

For great, and almost beyond numbering, is the multitude of men, women, and children who differ and are greatly distinguished from one another. They differ in race and kind, nationality and language, manner of life and age, disposition and craft, customs, ways, habits, knowledge, and social standing. They differ also in fortunes, characters, and qualities of soul. Yet when they are found in the Church, they are regenerated and recreated by the Spirit. She grants and communicates to all equally one divine form and name: to be, and to be called, Christ's own. Again, in accordance with faith, She grants them one simple, indivisible, and inseparable bond. This bond does not permit the many and countless differences of each to appear, even if they exist.

This means truly becoming a son of God by spiritual kinship. This means imitating, according to the heavenly law, the impartiality of God the Father. For everything that belongs to God is common and placed at our disposal. No one is withheld from His mercies and gifts, since the whole human race is equally filled with divine goodness and generosity.

From this it follows that all created beings alike in nature can, by contrast, be divided, since they cannot exist whole in each separate place. For although even among them, by the grace of faith, it happens that "the multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul," nevertheless they can be divided into individual persons by location, though not divided in the feeling of the heart. Some unbelievers can also come from believers and withdraw from fellowship with this single soul.

They completely left this world and in no way exalted themselves over one another by boasting of noble birth. Rather, as though they had come forth from the womb of one and the same Mother, the Church, they all rejoiced in one and the same brotherly love.

The active love of the first Christians and the danger of its distortion into hypocrisy. Ananias and Sapphira (4:32-5:11). After the previously described clash of the apostles Peter and John with the council, the Christians enjoyed outward peace for a time. Yet at this time, within the society itself, a danger to its inner state and development was revealed and removed by the God-enlightened attention of the apostles. For that reason it was a greater danger than outward persecutions from the Church's enemies. The state of Christ's Church at this time remained the same as before. The same union of Christians among themselves characterized the first Christian society even now. This was union and agreement not only in matters of faith, but also in all thoughts and moral dispositions.

The apostles continued their work with still greater zeal. The assembly of believers was distinguished still more by its virtues and by its incomparable concord. "The multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul; and no one called anything of his possessions his own, but they had all things in common." This does not mean that the first Christians adopted a dreamy and practically unrealizable theory known as communism. Its essence consists in the rejection of all personal property. Communism presupposes the compulsory abolition of all personal property. Among the first Christians, however, the sharing of possessions was only an expression of the inner spirit of self-denial with which they approached works of philanthropy.

The healing of the lame man and the apostles' great moral victory over the council, at its first attack on the new society, was a great event in the first Christian Church. The society had more than doubled, perhaps tripled, compared with what it had been after the day of Pentecost. Therefore the writer of Acts considered it necessary, as after the narrative of Pentecost, to make general observations about the inner state of this enlarged society (vv. 32-37). As the first characteristic feature, he points out that, despite the increase of the new society's members, there was complete oneness of mind and brotherly love among them. They had "one heart and one soul," a perfect union in thought, feeling, will, faith, and the whole order of spiritual life.