Acts 5:2

And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet.

"This means that they secretly kept back a part, while professedly devoting all to God."[9] Their sin was that of pretending to a degree of generosity higher than they actually possessed, a pretense which they had determined to support with falsehood.

The excessive enormity of this sin, in context, was that it placed in jeopardy the entire Christian movement. As Lange said, "It involved the whole church in very great danger."[10]

The apostles of Christ, after their baptism in the Holy Spirit, were inspired men, able to perform miracles and to discern the thoughts of men. They claimed infallibility, as having been guided into all truth by the blessed Spirit in them; and, if such a fraud as that undertaken by Ananias and Sapphira had been successful, it would have discredited the central authority of God's church upon the earth. The sale of a piece of land, as well as the price paid and received, could not long have been concealed, since such things have been in the public records of every generation; and, if the deception had succeeded, the word of the apostles themselves would have been suspect. There was no way that God could have permitted such a discreditation of his foreordained witnesses of the resurrection. Nor is this the only miracle that guarded the witness of the apostles. Herod was stricken to death (Acts 12:23); angels repeatedly intervened upon their behalf; and it is in this frame of reference that the significance of this frightful wonder appears.

[9] Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1953), p 93

[10] John Peter Lange, Commentary on Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1866), p. 85.