4. God Gives Best

Do not esteem the gift you give to the church as greater than the gift God gave you.

One of the greatest things a Christian can do is to give their possessions to feed the poor, but even this may be done the wrong way. If it is not done in love, there is no benefit in it for the giver.

… if I give all my possessions to feed the poor… but do not have love, it profits me nothing (1 Corinthians 13:3).

Likewise, it doesn’t matter how much you give, if you lie about the giving, the giving counts as a sin. Whatever you gave is worthless in the eyes of God. To understand that principle, consider how a believer in the church at Jerusalem, a man named Ananias, presented a large offering. His offering came from the sale of his own property.

Ananias told his wife that he was going to keep part of the money from the sale—and there was nothing wrong with keeping part of the money. The problem was that he didn’t let the church know about the part they were keeping. Ananias’ sin was that he presented the offering as if he were giving the total value of the land sold.

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also [like Barnabas] sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet (Acts 5:1-2).

Ananias was lying to the Holy Spirit by lying to the Church. Wasn’t the Holy Spirit present there when he lied—abiding within the members of the Church? So, lying to the Church is lying to the Holy Spirit; and lying to the Holy Spirit is lying to God, because the Holy Spirit is the very Spirit God sent us.

So, the sin of Ananias was much worse than it seemed. Peter didn’t say to Ananias, “Why did you lie to the Church?” Rather, in his efforts to show Ananias how serious it is to lie to the Church, Peter rebuked Ananias for lying to God.

Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God’ (Acts 5:3-4).

God made an example of Ananias by killing him right there on the spot. For God, a very serious sin was being committed. Does lying seem serious to us today—so serious that it warrants death? Do we imagine that financial giving could (in any way) justify a lie? There are lots of wealthy donors and philanthropists who think that it can, but it cannot.

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Let’s understand the way God wants us to give. He wants us to give in purity. He wants our giving to be done in a way that’s not contaminated by any sin. He wants us to give with genuine love.

Ananias died, and so did his wife, Sapphira. Their deaths caused the people in the Church to have a strong sense of the fear of the Lord. They realized that God was not going to be permissive with sin in the Church.

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. [His wife suffered the same fate soon afterwards.] And great fear seized all who heard what had happened (Acts 5:5).

We have to think this through clearly to understand what happened on that day: Ananias lied, and that’s a sin—but since lying is not normally punishable by death, let’s describe Ananias’ lie precisely: He made his congregation think that he had given more than he really gave. That’s the sin.

Now, this scenario may not sound so serious to us today, but the Holy Spirit had given a gift to all of the property owners in that first church. Everybody (yes everybody, according to Acts 4:34) who had property in the Church was selling it and giving the proceeds to the poor.

… all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold (Acts 4:34; LEB).

Ananias knew full well that everyone observing the giving presumed that the giving was 100% of the proceeds of sales. Therefore, when he presented his offering (having informed his wife in secret that their offering was only a percentage of the sale, demonstrating that they understood full well they were misleading the community), the community though that Ananias had given the full amount the land had been sold for. But it wasn’t.

As Peter pointed out, Ananias could have told the church that he was keeping a part for him and his wife. It wouldn’t have been a sin at all to decide to give less than the total value of the sale. The giving going on in the church was not an obligation. Nobody saw it as an obligation. They saw it as an anointing! Every property owner was still free to act according to their own conscience. But Ananias did not act according to his own conscience, and that was his sin.

Ananias was an actor. He was delighting in appearances, not in the truth. That was his sin. He faked a gift. Although attempting to use gifts by experimenting with them is perfectly acceptable, nobody has God’s permission to fake miracles, prophecies, tongues, or any other gift—not even the gift of giving! God will oppose anyone who falsifies gifts in his Church.

Holy Spirit-inspired giving is the only kind God allows in Church. If anyone corrupts giving—that is, if they falsify it, they’ve got a big problem with God. That’s what the members of the first Christian Church learned when God slew Ananias and Sapphira. That unfortunate couple tampered with something that God considers supremely important: not so much the gift they were giving to the church, but the gift God had given them.