Should Christians Sell all Their Possessions?

Tom: This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment, and the name of the program, as Gary mentioned, is Search the Scriptures Daily, and it’s our privilege to go through the Book of Acts, which is where we are now.

Dave, we want to encourage our listeners to…if they have the opportunity to go along with us…check us out. It’s God’s Word that we’re pointing to, and this day—this age where we see the situation in the church—people have to get back to the Word: the Word of God, the Word of God.

So we are in Acts:4:32And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
See All..., and I am going to read right to the end of the chapter: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” Dave, is this instruction for us? How far do we go with this today? I mean, this doesn’t seem like a command, as we mentioned in our earlier segment.

Dave: Well, it’s an example given to us by the early church of the way they lived, and certainly they must have been living as God wanted them to, because this is the second time now it says, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” And the apostles are right there, leading in this, and so forth.

Now, we have to read the Bible with understanding, and after our last segment, you know, we’re trying. This is a bit easier to understand, although I think the last one was. There is no command to marry or not to marry; you don’t command people to be celibates, and so forth, which is a grievous error; and you don’t command them to sell their goods. We’ll get in the next chapter and find out that, in fact, it clearly says that while the property was in your hands, it was yours to do with. We’ll find someone who simply lied. The problem was they claimed to have sold it for a certain price and given all of that to the church, and actually they sold it for a lot more. So that’s not the issue. And it would be a false impression to imagine now that we must join a community and we pool everything together. Rather clear what went on. It was extra land that they had that they didn’t need; it was extra houses that they had that they didn’t need, because the New Testament talks about the church in this house, the church in that house. We get a little farther on in the Book of Acts, they’re having a prayer meeting in a house. So obviously everyone didn’t sell all their houses that they had. They weren’t then living in the streets; these people didn’t suddenly become hippies and they’re just roaming around. Furthermore, this is not communism, and the language is rather precise. The distribution was made as people had need. Unfortunately, a lot of people claim to have needs that they don’t really have. There is no selfishness that entered into this. And verse 32, “Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; they had all things common.” In other words, you need something? I’m not going to be stingy about what I’ve got.

On the other hand, you have exhortations in the epistles: if you don’t work, you’re not going to eat. The church is not in the business of supporting indolence. It’s not in the business of encouraging sloth, so that’s not what is to happen here, either.

Tom, you remember Animal Farm; you remember what happened there. Some of the animals complained against the pigs and thought this was all to be equal, and remember the pig said, “Yeah, we’re all equal, but some of us are more equal than others.” And I could tell you of plenty of stories of people that I have known who were prisoners of the Soviets or the Red Chinese, and the selfishness that they saw on the parts of the communist bosses who ran the show.

Tom, I’ll never forget being picked up by a young man in San Francisco at the airport. He had been in the Bible study I had—a camp, you know—and I knew him quite well. And he had gotten off into—well, almost liberalism—and so concerned about the poor, and we should be concerned about the poor. But Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” And he became part of an organization—I won’t mention the name of it—and he picked me up at the airport, and he was very disillusioned, because the guy who was the head of this organization in that area, they caught him. He was robbing the organization of money that was supposed to go to the poor! The human heart hasn’t changed.

And, Tom, I have helped a lot of poor people in my day. I remember people that were in terrible circumstances, and we would help them out: maybe give them some new clothes, for example, and next week when we picked them up to take the children to Sunday school, half of the buttons are torn off, because they were not going to take care of those things. So we’re not to encourage laziness. We’re supposed to be diligent; we’re supposed to work hard.

So we don’t want to get that impression out of these verses: “You’ve got a free ride now, and the church is going to sell everything, and then we will divide up the money.” Well, what do you do when that money is gone? So this is not what it’s talking about, but it is telling us we’re not to be selfish, self-centered. We’re to be generous; we’re to love one another, care for one another, and if that were done today in the church, the needs would really be met.

So I think that’s all it is talking about, and it’s amazing what the Holy Spirit has done in the lives of these people, because these were people who were selfish. These were people who said, “No, that’s mine.” A dog in the manger—“You can’t have it.”

“Well, you don’t really need it.”

“Yeah, but it’s mine.” And suddenly, they’ve been told of the Holy Spirit, they have believed that Christ rose again from the dead, they have accepted Him as the one who paid the penalty for their sins, and their lives have been transformed. They are born again; Christ is now living in them. And so what these verses are telling us is here is a remarkable transformation that took place in these people’s hearts and lives, and this is what the early church was about, and it would be wonderful if it were that way today.

Tom: Yeah. Dave, the Lord has provided everything. He has given us His teaching, He’s given us His Holy Spirit. All we need to do is to be willing to obey what He says.