I was listening to a popular commentary on Acts 8 the other morning. Much of it was thoughtful and careful, and I found myself nodding along—until the teacher reached Simon’s request to buy the authority to lay hands on others and give the Holy Spirit. That moment, he said, revealed Simon’s true motive. An investment strategy. A way to make money on the back end, just as he had before. Proof, in his view, that Simon’s faith was never real at all.

Something about that conclusion didn’t sit right with me.

Simon “the Sorcerer” didn’t come to Jesus empty-handed. He came carrying a lifetime of assumptions about how power works. Scripture tells us he had amazed people for years, operating in a system where spiritual influence was something you mastered, controlled, and leveraged. Authority was acquired. Power was transferable. Influence produced return. That was the only framework Simon had ever known.

Then Philip preached Christ.

Simon believed. Simon was baptized. And Simon stayed close, watching what God was doing with open amazement. Not tricks this time. Not illusions. But something categorically different. The Spirit of God wasn’t being performed or manipulated. He was being given—freely, relationally, through prayer and the laying on of hands.

And that’s where Simon’s old framework surfaced.

When Simon asked to buy the authority to give the Holy Spirit to new believers, Peter didn’t soften his response. The rebuke was sharp—and it needed to be—because Simon was carrying a transactional mindset into a kingdom that doesn’t work that way. Grace isn’t bought. The Spirit isn’t controlled. And God doesn’t submit to systems of exchange.

But Peter’s response doesn’t end with rebuke.

He tells Simon to repent. He urges him to pray. He leaves the door open for forgiveness. That matters. If Simon were beyond hope, Peter wouldn’t invite repentance. If Simon were irredeemable, Peter wouldn’t direct him toward prayer. Correction, yes. Rejection, no.

Simon’s response is just as telling.

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t justify himself. He doesn’t walk away offended. He asks for prayer—earnestly, urgently—using the same language, even the same word Peter had just used when urging him to pray. It’s the response of someone who hears the rebuke and yields, not someone resisting the truth placed before him.

And then Luke does something subtle but powerful in his account. He tells us nothing else.

There’s no spectacle. No public restoration. No dramatic fallout. No final judgment pronounced. Luke simply moves on. And knowing how carefully Luke writes, that silence speaks volumes. If Peter had refused to pray, we would know. If Simon had been cast out, Luke would have told us. Instead, we’re given no reason to believe anything other than this—that Simon’s request was met quietly, relationally, with prayer.

That’s often how real repentance is handled. Not loudly. Not publicly. But with hands laid gently, words spoken low, and grace allowed to do its unseen work over time.

Simon’s story doesn’t end neatly, and that unsettles us. We prefer conversions that are clean, repentance that’s instant, and faith that arrives fully formed. But Acts 8 refuses that simplicity. It shows us a man who genuinely comes to Christ—and then has to unlearn the only way he’s ever understood power, authority, and worth.

That kind of transformation is rarely immediate.

And this scenario often plays out today—even to those of us where the obvious “sin” of others isn’t so obvious to them. Years ago, I listened to a former mafia finance guy—now a committed follower of Jesus—share his testimony. For nearly an hour, he spoke beautifully about grace, surrender, and a changed heart. And then, without hesitation, he said he still believed cheating the government on taxes was acceptable. After all, he reasoned, that’s what they do to us.

Was he wrong? Absolutely. Was his faith fake? Scripture gives us no permission to assume that about him. He wasn’t resisting Christ. Yet, he still had parts of a worldview he had to unlearn. And unlearning takes time.

Growth doesn’t happen when truth is spoken instead of relationship. It happens when truth is spoken inside commitment. That’s what Peter models here. Clear correction without abandonment. Rebuke without rejection. Grace with backbone.

Luke will go on, just a few verses later, to show us another conversion—very different in shape and tone. We’ll get there. But for now, Simon stands as a reminder that grace doesn’t require a tidy past, only a willing heart.

Reflection

When I was in Bible college four decades ago—for exactly one semester and ten days—one of my professors had a phrase he returned to often. Sadly and ironically, it’s almost the only teaching that stuck with me from those months. Whenever we tried to qualify or narrow God’s promises, he’d smile and say, “All means all—and that’s all all means.”

Acts 8 forces us to take that seriously.

Simon’s story reminds us that God’s grace isn’t the tolerance of sin, but it is greater than all of it. Grace confronts what’s wrong without withdrawing love. It corrects without discarding. It stays close enough for real change to happen. Past frameworks, ingrained habits, learned defenses—none of them disqualify a person from grace. But many of them do need to be unlearned, slowly and sometimes painfully, inside relationship.

So perhaps the question isn’t only whether your faith is real enough, but whether you believe grace works this way at all. Whether you’re willing to yield when truth presses on old assumptions. And whether you extend the same patience to others that God has shown to you.

Peter rebukes Simon clearly, but he also invites him to repent and pray. He doesn’t speculate about motives Scripture doesn’t name. He doesn’t declare Simon beyond hope. He leaves room for repentance to take root without demanding spectacle as proof.

And that raises a quieter question for us. When we encounter messy faith—confused faith, baggage-laden faith—do we respond with truth and commitment, or do we fill in the gaps with assumptions? Do we allow grace to do its work, or do we decide too quickly what someone must really mean, really want, or really deserve?

Because “all” means the ones who come clean. And it means the ones who come messy. It means the ones who stumble in carrying baggage they don’t yet know how to set down.

Grace doesn’t ask how you arrived… it asks whether you’re willing to stay.

Prayer

Papa,

Thank You for loving me enough to tell me the truth, even when it stings. Thank You that correction from You is never rejection, and that rebuke is not the end of relationship but often the beginning of healing.

Show me where I still carry old frameworks into new faith—where I expect You to work the way I’m used to things working, where I try to manage what was meant to be received, where I confuse control with trust. Give me a heart that yields when truth confronts me. Not defensive. Not offended. Just willing.

And help me extend that same grace to others. Teach me to correct without discarding, to speak truth without rushing to judgment, and to leave room for You to work where I can’t see the end of the story yet.

I believe Your mercy is greater than my confusion, and Your patience deeper than my mistakes. I place my past, my habits, and my assumptions back into Your hands—and I trust You to keep shaping what You’ve begun.

Amen.