Devotionary

Things had been going so well. The gospel was spreading and the church was growing. Thousands of new converts had been added and the Spirit of God was working mightily through the apostles. Yes, there had been a tense encounters with the high priest and the Jewish council, but they had come out of it relatively unscathed. But now, in Acts 4:32-5:2, we get a stark reminder that the early days of the church were not all rainbows and unicorns. In other words, the Spirit-filled and directed atmosphere in which the church was birthed, had another influence: The sin nature of man. While faith in Christ eliminates the penalty for sin, it does not eradicate its presence. Even those who know Christ as their Savior still wrestle with the indwelling presence of their old sin nature. The flesh, as Paul would later call it, is an ever-present reality for any and all believers. And that was true in those early days of the church. The story of Ananias and Sapphira provides us with a sobering reminder that the presence of th