Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 8:18

"Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles` hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money," — Acts 8:18 (ASV)

Simon’s response to the presence of God’s Spirit and the evidences of God’s power is one of those tragic stories that accompany every advance of the Gospel. Whenever and wherever God is at work among people, there are not only genuine responses but also counterfeit ones. Simon “believed” and “was baptized,” Luke has reported. Evidently Simon was included among those on whom Peter and John laid their hands. But the NT frequently reports incidents and events from a phenomenal perspective without always giving the divine or heavenly perspective. For this reason the verb “believe” (GK 4409) is used in the NT to cover a wide range of responses to God and to Christ (e.g., Jn 2:23; James 2:19). Neither baptism nor the laying on of hands conveys any status or power of itself, though Simon with his shallow spiritual perception thought they could.

Simon’s offer to pay for the ability to confer the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands evoked Peter’s consignment of Simon and his money to hell. Simon regarded the bestowal of the Spirit as a specially effective bit of magic, and he had no idea of the spiritual issues at stake. Peter’s analysis of the situation, however, is that Simon’s heart was “not right before God” because it was still “full of bitterness and captive to sin.” So Peter urges him, “Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart.” But Simon, preoccupied with external consequences and physical effects, asks only and rather lamely, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.” Luke expresses a sobering truth here: It is all too often possible to make a counterfeit response to the presence and activity of God’s Spirit.