Acts 4

Acts 4:36-5

Subdivision 5. (Acts 4:36-37; Acts 5:1-11.)The Government of God over those with Him. We have now to see the government of God over His own, now separated as a distinct company from the mass of Israel, although one could not say, as yet, from Israel itself. The trial of the nation as such is not yet ended. Meanwhile we are called away from this to see the attempt of the enemy against this new beginning, and the solemn judgment of God by which it is defeated. Yet on the other hand, we are not to overlook the divine appreciation of the fruits of the Spirit, where they are found, as in the case of Joseph, surnamed Barnabas, who by his ministry in self-sacrificing love to the need of the saints “purchases to himself a good degree” (1 Timothy 3:13), and we bear of him accordingly, in the after history. His name answers to his character here, -“one who adds,” -and he becomes indeed a “son of consolation,” -meriting his surname. In terrible contrast to him is Ananias (“Jah has shown grace”) but who abuses grace to his own destruction. The good report of Barnabas, if we may judge by the connection, seems to have moved him; but only with an ungodly emulation. He covets the reputation and influence; with perhaps much greater things following, as the movement spreads; but he has no thought, even for this, of making the sacrifice demanded. Outwardly he must do it, while his heart refuses; and thus, in conjunction with his wife, he forms a deliberate plan to deceive, -leaving God out. He actually sells his possession, and professedly brings the whole purchase-money, to lay it down at the apostles’ feet. But he has not brought the whole: he reserves a part for himself, and in the midst of the divine power working (only in grace as yet, which probably he misinterprets, to his ruin,) does not fear to offer this imitation of the fruit of divine love, -in fact, a fraudulent attempt to buy for himself what alone be values.

Satan was thus working from inside the assembly, to destroy truth and holiness, and thus early to introduce into it the worldly elements which, by and by, alas, were to gain open allowance. But the Spirit of God, as yet ungrieved, forbids the intrusion of the evil; and judgment swift and terrible smites down the transgressor. His unhappy wife, coming in afterwards, and deliberately reaffirming her husband’s falsehood, shares his punishment. And fear falls upon all the assembly, and upon all that hear these things. Thus we have indicated to us the evils which, from within as well as from without, threatened the infant Church. It is in a hostile world. It carries the fatal seeds of corruption in its own bosom. For in this respect the community can only be as those who compose it. The exercise as to evil and the struggle with it we are not yet, in the wisdom of God, delivered from; although the final deliverance is completely secured. God is training us for eternity, and to bring us into full participation in His apprehension of it.

For this He would have us see it as those who are partakers of the divine nature, and yet linked with that flesh in which “dwelleth no good thing.” Responsible to be its masters, we may yet degrade ourselves to do its will, and need at all times to be on the watch against it; while the world around appeals to it, and incites it to activity, and Satan with all the cunning of four thousand years’ acquirement is “the prince of this world,” proved so by the Cross! So thoroughly are we intended, it is plain, to learn the painful -and yet, it must be, salutary -lesson of the nature of that which exhibits the ruin of the creature fallen away from God! But this is also the background of the divine glory in redemption, in which He is displayed in His mastery over it, and thus we are held fast to Him forever.