Put the Lord’s Spirit to the test means, as the commentators point out, that Ananias and Sapphira had put the Spirit to the test by seeing if they could get away with their scheme. In the phrase Lord’s Spirit, Lord presumably stands for God (see v. 3 Holy Spirit; v. 4 God; and here Lord’s Spirit). It is important in rendering the word decide to specify that both Ananias and Sapphira had joined together in the decision.

It is obviously necessary to avoid the traditional rendering “tempt the Spirit of the Lord,” for there is no implication of “tempting to sin” but of “testing.” Even the term test is not easily employed, for in a sense Ananias and Sapphira were not trying to determine the qualities of the Lord’s Spirit but were attempting to see what they could get by with. In some languages this particular process must be described rather specifically, for example, “decided if you could lie to the Lord’s Spirit and not suffer punishment” or “decided to see whether you thought you could deceive the Lord’s Spirit and not suffer.”

Right now translates a frequently used particle of emphasis, literally “behold.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .