The book of Acts has much to teach us about corporate spiritual renewal. The early church was the epitome of a spiritually renewed church, and Luke is not just recording historical events, he is revealing key elements of corporate spiritual renewal for our benefit.
Reading through Acts, we see the patterns of corporate spiritual renewal, along with the obstacles that Satan puts in the way to oppose these renewals. Acts 4-6 records three common obstacles, and how the Jerusalem church overcame each of them. Acts 4:1-31 in particular shows how Satan likes to attack spiritual renewals through persecution. He also strategically attacks from within the church itself.
Read Acts 4:32-37. The key element to corporate spiritual renewal here is radical generosity. Luke introduces Barnabas as a positive example. He will play a greater role in Acts, and he serves as a contrast to two other people whom Luke introduces next as negative examples.
Read Acts 5:1-11. The obstacle here is members not giving all of their money to the church, and God overcomes this by killing them, Which is why Acts 5:11 says “great fear came over all the church!” It is not as simple as it seems; there is a deeper lesson for us to learn from this passage — but it can be so offensive to our 21st century sensibilities that we cannot learn this lesson until we first deal with these objections.
Did Ananias and Sapphira get wiped out because they refused to give all their assets to the church? No, this liquidation of assets was entirely voluntary (see Acts 5:4). Radical generosity like Barnabas’ cannot be compulsory — it must be motivated by freely chosen love.
The issue is not how much money they gave nor is there evidence that God sent them to hell. They are described as true believers in Jesus — and true believers in Jesus go to heaven when they die because eternal life is a gift based on Jesus’ death, not based on our good works (see John 3:16). Ananias and Sapphira were sent home early.
As God, He has every right to do this. And as the leader of His church, He has the right and responsibility to discipline His church in whatever ways are needed to protect its spiritual health and maintain the integrity of His reputation. Normally, God does this in less dramatic ways, but He reserves the right to intervene more dramatically because of the cost and impact it could make on the church as a whole.
After all, they gave lots of money to the church! This is the right question to ask. To answer it, we have to look past the outward action to the inward attitude that motivated the action.
Ananias and Sapphira may have given a lot of money, but they were lying (Acts 5:3). Lying about what? They were claiming that the money they were giving was the whole amount of the property liquidation rather than just part of it. But why did they lie? Evidently, because they saw the praise and honor Barnabas got for giving the full proceeds of his property liquidation and they wanted that praise and honor for themselves. Maybe the part they gave was even greater than the amount Barnabas gave, so they thought they would get even more praise than he did — even though it would be a lesser sacrifice. Whatever the details, they were posturing themselves as more generous than they actually were, and they were doing this to get people’s praise.
The Bible calls this kind of lying hypocrisy. “Hypocrisy” is a word transliterated from the Greek and was used by the Greeks to describe an actor who had not fully identified himself with his role and thus gave an unconvincing performance. Thus it came to refer to anyone who put on a false front in order to get acceptance or praise from people. Religious hypocrisy fakes “good” things and hides bad things in order to get people’s acceptance and/or praise.
Jesus hated religious hypocrisy; He exposed and condemned it wherever He saw it (see Matthew 23), and He warned His followers to avoid it like the plague (see Matthew 6:1-18). Why did Jesus condemn hypocrisy so strongly?
Because it is an insidious counterfeit of authentic Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality is not like other religions which are primarily about ritual or even ethics. It is about the heart (see 1 Timothy 1:5 and 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1) — loving other people freely and sacrificially rather than using them, and doing this so people will be attracted to Jesus rather than making them impressed with me. Religious hypocrisy appears spiritual,but it is actually counterfeit love for others and forGod in order to get praise for yourself.
It is insidious because it is in the heart of every Christian. It is easy to feel disgusted with ourselves as we examine our hearts and see how easily this sin sneaks in and permeates our spiritual lives. It can be tempting to ask for feedback simply so we can hear praise for our efforts. When we interact with nonbelievers, it is easy to wonder how impressed our believing friends would be if they saw how great our witness is. It can be especially tempting to pray in ways that make us look more spiritual than we actually are. Some even pretend to acknowledge their hypocritical attitudes so they can appear to be more spiritual and humble. The fallen human heart has an endless capacity for hypocrisy, so we should not be surprised to see how quickly and easily it sneaks into our lives. Ananias and Sapphira did not struggle against this temptation to hypocrisy — they actively embraced it, conspired together to act on it, and persisted in it even when they were exposed. This extraordinary level of hardness was something God could not let go unpunished, otherwise it could spread to others in the church.
This is why Jesus warned His disciples against hypocrisy (see Luke 12:1). Like leaven in bread or cancer cells in the body, hypocrisy spreads and destroys Jesus’ credibility unless it is exposed and disciplined. When hardened hypocrisy spreads, and especially when it is tolerated by leaders, it kills true spirituality and replaces it with a pseudo-spirituality that misrepresents Jesus and repels spiritually honest people. Sometimes this results in a public scandal that makes Christianity a mockery. More often, it results in a group of people pretending to be superficially nice who are actually living for themself and hiding in their sin — and this grieves God’s Spirit and makes the church ineffective in its ability to attract people to Jesus. May God do whatever He needs to do to prevent this!
That is exactly what God did in Acts 5. He took this extreme measure because He knew how menacing hypocrisy was to the spiritual health of this newborn church. And look at the result. The Christians learned to find hypocrisy completely unacceptable and fear it in themselves (see Acts 5:5b,11). This enhanced their unity because it motivated them to relate honestly to one another (see Acts 5:12b). It repelled people who were inclined toward religious hypocrisy (see Acts 5:13a), but it enhanced their reputation as a community of high integrity (see Acts 5:13b). And God continued to draw people to Jesus through them (see Acts 5:14), which is what corporate spiritual renewal is all about!
Corporate spiritual renewal is always positively correlated with high authenticity and low hypocrisy in Jesus’ followers. I say “low” because, as noted above, fallen people continue to wrestle with hypocritical motives. What can we do to cultivate a high-authenticity/low-hypocrisy church?
We can treasure God’s grace.
God’s grace is what makes Christianity good news. “Grace” is the other side of mercy. “Mercy” means not getting the judgment you deserve; “grace” means getting the benefits you do not deserve. If I am speeding and a policeman stops me but decides not to ticket me, that is mercy. But if he escorts me to his house and prepares a lavish dinner for me, that is grace! The essence of Christianity is that through Jesus, God offers us lavish mercy and grace through faith in Jesus. Mercy, because Jesus was willing to take the judgment we deserve for our sins. Grace, because through Jesus, He accepts us and delights in us as He delights in Jesus Himself. This is the great treasure!
Why does treasuring God’s grace promote authenticity and inhibit hypocrisy? Because we are hard-wired to need acceptance and honor from some other person whom we deem important. If we build our lives on God’s grace, we become humbly confident of His acceptance. This frees us to love other people instead of trying to impress them because we do not need their acceptance, and it motivates us to tell them how great Jesus is instead of boasting in ourselves. Thus, grace cuts the root from which hypocrisy grows. But if you stray from this focus, you will inevitably pursue other people’s acceptance, either secular people’s acceptance through worldly performance, or religious people’s acceptance through hypocrisy.
This is why churches that stray from a grace-focus are always vulnerable to hypocrisy. People hide their sins because they cannot afford to be honest. Or they engage in ministry, but like Ananias and Sapphira, they do it to impress others or move up in status so they can “be someone.” We are not immune from this. Only a radical focus on God’s grace can prevent this. Leaders have to genuinely treasure God’s grace and consistently expound it. And all of us have to prioritize growing in our understanding and appreciation of God’s grace (see Ephesians 3:16-19) so we stay “full” of His love and acceptance rather than feel the need to start deceptively earning it from one another.
We can commit ourselves to honest spiritual friendships. One proof that we actually believe that God’s acceptance is enough is that we build spiritual friendships in which we tell the truth about what is going on in our lives (see Ephesians 4:25 and James 5:16). In such friendships, we commit to this kind of honesty and we give our friends the freedom to ask and probe if they sense evasion. We are committed to accepting one another, but we take lying very seriously. This commitment to relational honesty kills hypocrisy before it has the opportunity to grow into a larger problem, and it enables us to experience more of God’s grace through our friends. When the majority of the people in a church are involved in such friendships, there is an intangible but powerful sense of spiritual authenticity when we meet together. And we are much better witnesses for Jesus when we are at work, home, among neighbors, and going about our daily lives.. And God then sends spiritually hungry people to us, because He knows that they will learn spiritual health instead of hypocrisy!
This is one reason why corporate spiritual renewals are often preceded by an outbreak of honest confession by Christians who repent from their hypocrisy. This is also why these communal renewals multiply intentional ways of promoting spiritually honest friendships. It is crucial to look for and protect these kinds of friendships and it requires walking in the light of Jesus. Are you averse to this kind of friendship? Is it because you know you are hiding things that God wants you to bring out into the light? I urge you to choose someone whose spiritual integrity you trust, and disclose it. You will experience great cleansing and revitalization of your spiritual life!
We can practice serving God “in secret.” Jesus warned His followers against practicing their righteousness before people simply for the sake of being noticed by them (see Matthew 6:1). Instead, He urged them to practice much of their spirituality “in secret.” If God’s acceptance is really enough for us, we will be satisfied to do things for Him that receive no human or church recognition. On the other hand, if we find ourselves unmotivated to serve or study or pray or give unless people know about it, we are succumbing to hypocrisy.
This is why we should monitor the ratio of our public-to-private spiritual activity. It is healthy to pray and study the Bible alone and not just with others, to give financially in an anonymous or unobtrusive way, to serve people who cannot give anything back or whose recognition cannot benefit you, to turn away from soliciting praise from others and deflect it when it comes your way, and so on. This is especially true for people who have highly public ministries that involve leadership or teaching in particular.
We cannot make a corporate spiritual renewal happen — only God can do that. But, we can pray for it, remove any obstacles, and be individual models and catalysts of it! Let us pray that God will begin with us and enable us to be a church that truly treasures His grace, that practices real honesty in friendships, and that delights in serving Him and others in humble, unobtrusive ways. Then Jesus may work powerfully through us to show our community that He is real and good!
