Unchanging Mercy: What Ananias and Sapphira Reveal

Scripture

Our verse for today comes from Acts 5:3, “But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?'”

Background

Scripture goes to great extremes to convey to us the nature of God. It invokes dozens of names and titles for Him, we have a vast array of deeds and events which were and could only have been conducted by Him, and even His desires and passions are expressed openly and majestically. The pinnacle of His communication to us, of course, came in the person of Jesus Christ, who, we are told, is the exact representation or expression of His nature and being. One of the most common relations God makes of who He is comes in the phrase He often used, “The Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” Now He doesn’t refer back to this occasion so frequently because it was the pinnacle of His work or existence. Rather, He constantly reminds us of that great victory those thousands of years before because in it He rescued His people from bondage and did it by way of a sacrificial lamb. And that speaks of one of the most reassuring aspects of our Father and Creator, and that is that He is unchanging. Just as He rescued and saved by the blood of a lamb back then, He rescues and saves now. Therefore, about His Son He declared, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” And it is this sameness that you and I should revel in when we consider the fate of Ananias and Sapphira.

Application

Oddly, if Jesus dealt the same way now as He did with those two regarding lying to the Holy Spirit, you and I would have been dead long ago. Our hypocrisy and arrogance and capitulation to pressure or discomfort is a mighty taskmaster. But in His sameness, Jesus shows mercy to us where we would have no other hope. We should overflow with gratitude that our last or next deceit is not cause for our final breath, and we should likewise gush with thanksgiving that our salvation is secure because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and has nothing to do with what we do, did, or will do. Our God is still the same. He hates being lied to and is jealous of His church and His glory. And we should fear Him even as we love Him. So knowing that your day is an expression of the same grace and mercy that has always been from Him, let it show how different He has made you.

Charge

As we seek Him today, ponder what you might get if you didn’t get His grace and mercy, and see where that takes your heart.

Editor Comment: This devotional matters today because it reminds believers that God's holiness demands reverence even as His unchanging mercy secures our salvation despite our failures.