Read Acts 5:29

We must obey God rather than any human authority.
(Acts 5:29)

Too many people these days are relying on too few to walk in integrity. Your personal integrity matters more than I can put into words. As Christians, we can’t play fast-and-loose with our money and expect it not to affect us. It’s God’s money. We can’t play fast-and-loose with our morality either. A believer can’t sleep around and get away with it as a Christian. There’s a terrible price to pay, because God holds His own directly accountable.

We are not our own. We answer to Him, remember, not men. Your personal integrity is not a private matter. Why? As a Christian, you represent Christ. You live for the honour of His name and the reputation of His church. You can’t compromise your integrity without it affecting others. Remember, the church is a body. If one part suffers, we all suffer.

But when you trust in a holy God with fear and trembling, you’re extremely careful with your lifestyle. Purpose to set your mind on God’s interests...which, after all, are really your best interests.

God Himself solved the problem of a lack of integrity in Acts 5. He took the lives of those who compromised. Rather than this divine discipline dividing the church, the body of Christ became more than ever united and operated under a heightened fear of God and hatred for sin. That was healthy. And it further strengthened the apostles to speak boldly, regardless of the consequences.

Because the church continued to increase in number, and because the people of Jerusalem held the apostles in high esteem, the Jewish religious leaders were filled with jealousy. They had the apostles arrested and thrown into prison and then threatened them to stay silent about Jesus. Their response?

We must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29 NASB)

Their courageous response is what the church father John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, had in mind when he wrote, “We must not mind insulting men, if by respecting them we offend God.”¹

¹ John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, trans. Graham Neville (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 65.
Taken from The Church Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2010 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faith Words, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.