What is the biggest immediate danger that a Christian faces? I’m not, of course, talking about people who claim to be believers, but aren’t. I’m talking about actual born-again, blood-bought saints. Well it seems to me from the Biblical text that the greatest danger facing a real child of God is that they will die a premature death and lose rewards in eternity. The text of Scripture is plain that there will be differing kinds and amounts of rewards for believers in the Millennium and into Eternity based upon one’s faithfulness. Scripture is also plain that God is more than willing to terminate the earthly lives of believers to prevent them from doing damage to the Church.
Thus, it stands to reason, that the greatest danger I face is that I will become destructive to the Church and God kills me and I lose eternal rewards. The shocking thing is, however, that the kinds of things that the Bible shows are instances where believers die prematurely, are not the kinds of things we would typically think of. We would tend to think of terrible heresies, or child abuse, or mass murder. But God’s standards are actually much more sensitive than that. I Corinthians 11:17-34 are plain that not eating the Lord’s Supper in brotherly and sisterly fellowship, but instead using it as a way to reassert social and class distinctions was a cause for God to cause believers in Corinth to die.
The other key passage is Acts 5, the well-known story of Ananias and Sapphira. And it’s here, in this passage I want us to focus. The irony of this passage is that we tend to think that the sin that lead to their deaths was the sin of holding back the money without telling the Apostles. Certainly they did that, and certainly it was sinful for them to do it. Their actions were motivated by a desire to be influential and popular and powerful like Barnabas. But when we read the text itself lying to the Apostles is explicitly NOT what Peter emphasizes. In fact, Peter says to Ananias:
“You have not lied to people but to God” ESV
The NIV tries to bridge the gap and show how they did, in fact, lie to people, and so they insert “just” so that they did not JUST lie to people, but to God. And while this is theologically correct, it ignores that Peter is making a point. Peter says in verse 3 that Satan filled Ananias’ heart to lie to the Holy Spirit – incidentally here’s a great Trinitarian passage, but that’s another story. The emphasis in verse 3 is that Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. In verse 4, Peter says that he didn’t lie to people but to God. Again, the NIV is theologically accurate and may be getting at what Peter meant. But strictly speaking, that’s not what the text says. So, what’s going on here?
Well, I think Luke gives us a little hint with a nifty little piece of word play. If we look at verse 2 we see that Luke uses the suppletive verb ἤνεγκω which means to bear, bring, or carry. Acts literally says: “and he held back from the price; his wife having shared in the knowledge; and bringing some part [of it] he placed it at the apostles feet.” And then, when we look at verse 6, we see that some young men came and carried him out. The verb in v 6 is ἐξενέγκαντες, which is exactly the same verb as used in verse 2 – they are both nominative, masculine, aorist, active, participles. The only difference is that in verse 6 the participle is plural. And it also has a prefix on it “ex” meaning that they carried him out.
Now, if you’re following along, you might be saying, “but Lukey, there are quite a lot of important words repeated in this text, why focus on this one?” I’m focusing on this one because these verbs are used by Luke, not Luke’s quotations of Peter. This is the narrator’s view of the scene. One of my rules of Bible interpretation is that when we face difficult passages, we need to preference the narrator because the narrator is giving us the broadest and final view of the topic. Quotations, whether of direct or indirect speech, are closed statements. They exist only in their context. The narrator gives us a bigger view that isn’t trapped in the immediate context.
So, when I see a word repetition in the narration of a difficult passage, I’m going to focus carefully on that repetition. Luke focuses here, so he wants us to notice the parallel actions of Ananias who came bearing money to win favor in the church and the church then bearing him out to bury him. He bore the money in, hoping to get the most out of life: esteem in the church and money in his pocket; he was borne out having lost his life. And esteem. And his money, since there’s no pocket in a shroud.
How does this help us understand the difficulty of Ananias lying to the Holy Spirit? I think what Luke is saying is: what you bring to the Body of Christ you bring to God!
Now that’s a frightening thought – that if we come to church as hypocrites we’re not lying to our brothers and sisters, really we’re lying to God. What we bring to the Church we bring to God. That means that when we bring honesty, humility, and the fruit of the Spirit, we bring those things to God. When we bring lies, hypocrisy, and the fruit of the flesh…we bring those to God as well.
And lying to God has consequences. While God doesn’t seem to be striking people dead en masse, do we not see deadness? Because God is gracious; He is giving us opportunities to repent and isn’t just taking every hypocrite out of the Church – if He did, I and a lot of other people would no longer be here! But the text stands as a warning that hypocrisy and that bringing self-serving lies do bring death. And not only Spiritual deadness – and that is the most important part – but physical death and decay, as well.
First, God, I don’t believe, is in the business of answering prayers of lying hypocrites the way that lying hypocrites desire. This has important and immediate implications in this world and particularly for our health and physical well-being. Being holy matters. And God does grant the requests of righteous people more than the requests of unrighteous people. Read James and disagree…I dare you. Despite our foolish notions of egalitarianism and equality, God is not in the business of treating everyone samely.
Second, living a lie comes with psycho-physical consequences. This is the natural corruption caused by sin that we read about in Romans 1 and 8. God doesn’t need to send lightning bolts; He’s designed this world and our selves to reap punishments without special intervention. Duplicity and hypocrisy lead to a breakdown of the self and the disintegration of personality. This has obvious and well-established consequences. Death, or at least an acceleration of dying, comes through lying to God.
Third, nobody is really as clever as they think. Hypocrites think they’re pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes – very rarely does that seem to be the case. I don’t think that people living a lie are half as smart and secretive as they think they are – because it’s hard to be two people…especially in a small town like where I live. This leads to death in reputation. And that matters – it matter because it hurts one’s witness. It’s very hard to proclaim soul-saving and life-changing Truth when you live a lie.
Fourth, churches die when they become full of hypocrites and people who bring lies to church. Maybe not overnight. It might take years or decades, but they die and eventually the lampstand is snuffed out.
In closing, I want to give us a warning and some hope. I want to warn us all that bringing hypocrisy to the Church brings death, always and every time. On the other hand, as long as we draw breath, there’s time to repent and begin to deal honestly with our brothers and sisters and begin to live a life of integrity. I say begin, because living a life of integrity is a process. All of us are hypocrites to some degree – we lie to and are mysteries even unto ourselves. But we can, and should, and must strive to be honest and integrous. And when we seek to do so in humility and ask the Holy Spirit to make us honest, God will grant that request – especially if we’re honest enough to admit that we don’t entirely want to be honest…but we want to want to be.
Because as long as we have the flesh, we’ll never have perfect motives and we’ll never perfectly agree with ourselves. But we can want to want holiness, even if there’s a big part of us that doesn’t want it. Because there is that part. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord that He has overcome sin and can conquer the flesh in us.
Amen.