Acts 5:1Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

When so many were acting in the same way, when there was such grace and such signs, Ananias was not corrected by any of this. Once blinded by covetousness, he brought destruction upon his own head. The grave point is that the sin was committed by agreement, and no one else knew what had happened. How did it come into the mind of this wretched and miserable man to do this?

Despite the multitude of persons who acted in this way, selling their possessions and giving the money to the apostles, Ananias learned nothing from it. Despite such great signs and such an abundance of grace, he brought destruction upon himself. Yet the astonishing thing is that the transgression was by agreement with his wife, and no one else witnessed the sale. This is how the thought arose in that wretched man to act as he did.

But at this time there occurred the sorrowful event of the moral fall of one Christian couple. A certain man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold his real estate, as other Christians did, in order to entrust the proceeds to the apostles for the benefit of the whole Christian community. Yet they delivered to the apostles only a certain part of the price and kept the rest of the money for themselves. Before the apostles and the other believers, however, they presented themselves as people who had renounced all their property for the common benefit. In the deed of Ananias and Sapphira, hypocrisy was revealed in addition to love of money. If the first vice was especially dangerous for the unhappy slaves of it themselves, the latter could have affected the whole Christian community.

One truly striking incident is recorded in the book of Acts as testimony to the especially pure inner state in which the community of believers in the Lord was kept. It also shows what sincere fear it had before its sacred guides. We have already seen that the mutual fellowship of the believers extended to self-denial. Some sold villages and houses in order to have means for charity toward the poor. To this it must be added that even the distribution of considerable property was entrusted to the apostles' direction. Whatever anyone received for sold property, all brought it into the church and laid it at the apostles' feet. They did this with reverence, as a sacrifice to God cast down before His ministers. In Acts, one of the Levites, Barnabas the Cypriot, is especially mentioned.

This Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, was carried away by the example of others and likewise sold his property, intending to place the proceeds in the common treasury of the Christians. But at this point a feeling of self-interest stirred within them. They kept back part of the sum received from the sale, and, bringing the rest to the apostles, declared that it was the whole amount they had received. The falsehood of this statement was plainly reflected on the face of Ananias, who was not yet wholly corrupted. The Apostle Peter therefore addressed him with a stern rebuke, saying that they had lied not to the apostles, but to the Holy Spirit.

Ananias and his wife Sapphira did not act as Barnabas and the other members of the Church did. For this they were severely punished by the Lord through the Apostle Peter. After selling property, namely land or a field (v. 8), they kept back part of the price received from the sale. They brought only a certain portion to the common treasury of the apostles, saying that what they brought was all that had been received for the sale (v. 8). In this deed not only their self-interest was expressed, but also deliberate and conscious falsehood, and chiefly hypocrisy. They were deceiving the whole Christian community, with the apostles at its head. They presented themselves as being just as self-denying for the sake of the needy brethren as the others were, while in fact they were not.

The punishment of Ananias and Sapphira for their attempt to deceive the apostles about the price of the property they sold is as instructive as it is sorrowful. It testifies that even in the primitive Church, so lofty and pure in the majority of its members, there were self-interested and hypocritical persons. They were ready even to deceive those clothed with the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were needed for governing the Church. Together with the apostles, they were also deceiving the whole Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Blessed Theophylact says: "What is astonishing is that the transgression was by agreement with the wife, and no one else had witnessed the sale.