---
title: Acts 5:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-5-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-5-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Acts 5:4
testament: NT
section: Acts
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Acts 5:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Did it not belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? How could you conceive such a deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God!”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "Why is it that you have purposed such a deed as this in your heart? You have played false, not to men, but to God."
- NWT (2013 revision): "Why did you think up such a deed as this in your heart? You have lied, not to men, but to God."

## JW Usage

To keep the "holy spirit is an active force" doctrine intact, JWs read verse 4 as Peter saying Ananias lied to God by way of deceiving the apostles who operated under the spirit. The spirit is framed as a transmission channel; God at the end of the channel is the real recipient of the deception. On this reading the parallel between verse 3 ("lied to the holy spirit") and verse 4 ("not to men, but to God") is treated as a contrast between men and God, with the spirit in a middle mediating role.

## Protestant Usage

Peter's logic does not tolerate that reading. Watch the contrast carefully. In verse 3 the indirect object is the holy spirit. In verse 4 Peter explicitly rules out one possible recipient ("not to men") and names the actual recipient ("but to God"). If the spirit in verse 3 were merely a channel through which the lie was transmitted, Peter's contrast in verse 4 would be "not to the spirit, but to God." Instead, the contrast is "not to men, but to God" — which equates the spirit of verse 3 with the God of verse 4. The two verses stack the same action onto two names for the same recipient. And the deed itself requires personhood: you cannot lie to a force, deceive a medium, or defraud a channel. The whole category of "lying to" is intelligible only if the recipient has a mind that can be deceived. At the door, pair Acts 5:3-4 with Acts 13:2 (the Spirit speaks), Ephesians 4:30 (the Spirit is grieved), and 1 Corinthians 12:11 (the Spirit wills). Every one of these is an activity only a person can perform, and Acts 5 adds the decisive identification: lying to the Spirit is lying to God.

## NWT Issue

The divergence at Acts 5:3-4 is typographic: the NWT keeps "holy spirit" lowercase throughout, while "the Father" and "Jesus Christ" retain capitalised proper-name treatment. This matches the NWT's systematic lowercase-plus-neuter-pronoun pattern across every pneumatological passage (John 14-16, 1 Cor 12:11, Eph 4:30, 2 Cor 13:14, Matt 28:19). The Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear gloss renders the Greek faithfully without any typographic demotion. Peter's argument survives the lowercase treatment — the equation of lying-to-the-spirit with lying-to-God is intact even in the JW Bible — but the visual cue subtly coaches readers toward an impersonal reading the text itself does not support.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Lying to the Spirit Is Lying to God](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/acts5-spirit-is-god.md) — Acts 5:3-4 [Holy Spirit]
- [The Spirit Says 'I'](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/paraclete-personal-pneumatology.md) — Acts 13:2 — First-Person Verbs in Narrative Prose [Holy Spirit]