The idyllic picture of the church presented in 4:32–37 had to be qualified. The church must soon have made the painful discovery that sin could enter into its fellowship, and because it suited his theme, and was a matter of particular interest to him, Luke chose to mention what was probably an early and notorious instance of sin in connection with the common fund. Ehrhardt sees the story of Ananias and Sapphira as a test case for the question whether a rich man could be saved—important for the church of Luke’s day—and Luke’s reply to that question (v. 4), that riches are not in themselves bad but constitute a sore temptation to the Christian (p. 22). Thus the story illustrates the “mortal danger present in the attachment to the world effected through possessions and riches” (S. Brown, p. …