Acts 24:22-27 Felix and Paul

This narrative is a bit confusing. Felix was evidently familiar with the early church, so he postponed the hearing until the chiliarch from Jerusalem came to give his version of events. But there is no record that Lysias ever came, which seems odd. If the Roman governor told the commander to come, under Roman practice, he would come. And so the next hearing didn't happen right away. And then some days later Felix arrived with his wife, although the text doesn't mention that he ever left. Paul presented the gospel, or at least some version of an appeal to Felix to turn to God, since he discussed righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment. The text does not say what Paul said about faith in Christ. We would have to infer that the Holy Spirit was having Paul share aspects of faith that Felix could grasp. Evidently there was enough conviction through the Holy Spirit that Felix became afraid; certainly not of Paul, his prisoner, but more likely of the judgment of God.

          In a typical bureaucratic response to things not within the normal protocols of doing business (and what bureaucracy exists that doesn't mostly work by having established procedures for routine transactions?), Felix postponed any decision. At the same time, he evidently wanted or expected a bribe. He would occasionally have Paul talk to him, but there is no record he ever responded to the gospel. When his term of office came to an end, he did nothing, but left Paul in prison, as a favor to the Jews. Why do a favor for the Jews? No reason is given. 

Acts 24:10-21 Paul's defense of a clear conscience

The Holy Spirit had Paul make a direct response to the first charge. The first riot had not been caused by anything Paul did or said, but was solely because Jews from Asia thought Paul had brought a Gentile into the temple. The claim that he was evangelizing there was not the reason for the riot, and was not even true. No Gentle was present. No one came forward to say that Paul had tried to evangelize them in the temple. res ipsa loquitur.

          Paul then went on to present a case for the gospel. As a Pharisee he had believed in the resurrection of the dead, and that since he feared the judgment of God in that resurrection, he had tried to live with a clean conscience. The same statement he had made in Acts 23:1, although this time the High Priest could not command to have Paul struck for saying it. Since the Holy Spirit had Paul repeat this statement in both instances, it must have some significance. Paul stated that he served God according to the Way (hodon - a road or a manner of conduct) which was the then current reference to the church, which they called hairesin, which could be either a choice or a dissension, usually rendered as a sect. Paul emphasized that he did so in full faith in everything that was written in the Law and the Prophets. It is interesting that the Holy Spirit did not have Paul name Jesus as the fulfillment of all the things prophesied in the Old Testament, but implicitly presented the gospel to that point. Instead, he closed by repeating the statement that incited the riot at the second hearing in Jerusalem, which had set the Pharisees and the Sadducees into a heated dissension. (Acts 23:6-10)

          What was the significance of Paul's repeated statement that he had a clean conscience? Paul made numerous references to conscience in his epistles, including his own conscience (Romans 9:1, 2 Tim 1:3), the conscience of a believer (I Tim 1:5, 1:19, 3:9) the conscience of a sinner (I Tim 4:2, Titus 1:15), and the conscience of a Gentile (Romans 2:15, I Cor 8:10-12). This suggests that the Holy Spirit was attempting to communicate to the hearers (who were hopefully also listeners) that the human conscience is one of the primary means by which God communicates to all people. The Jews were privileged to have the Law of Moses and the writings of the Jewish prophets, but God practices equal opportunity. Every person alive has a conscience. A brazen sinner may have seared his conscience, but it was there. In fact, the wound of a seared conscience may cause more pain that a conscience that is sensitive to God, because God forgives and can comfort, but the scar over the wound of the seared conscience will block that healing flow of the Holy Spirit.

          Conscience is one means by which people can hear from God. The on-line dictionary defines conscience as the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong. But God has other means by which to speak to use. He can speak to us about things that we can or should do that may not have a moral dimension, but are simply pragmatic. That would be felt as an inner voice where we just have a feeling we should do something, which we might call intuition. Another means of communication may be a sense of God's presence in our life that is not connected directly to our actions past, present, or future. Rather this sense often takes the form of a feeling of God's love surrounding us, encouraging us, comforting us, which we might label communion. Not the communion that is symbolically enacted with the elements of unleavened bread and wine, but a relational connection and experience. Of course there are also means by which God can communicate to us externally, such as circumstances (although they can have many different interpretations), through the reading of His written word, or through the words of other people. 

Acts 24:1-9 Tertullus argues the prosecution case

Acts 24:1 The Jewish leaders figured that at this point they would go back to plan A, eschewing duplicity and treachery, and try legal arguments. Having failed before with religious arguments, they brought a lawyer with them to argue their case before Felix. We have to presume that this lawyer would do a much better job of making legal arguments that the Romans would respond to.

Act 24:2-9 After the usual obsequious pandering to Felix's ego, Tertullus brings the charges. First, that Paul is the source of all the unrest that occurred, not only in Jerusalem but throughout the world (!), and second that he had tried to desecrate the Temple when they arrested him (!). He called Paul a real pest (loimos), pestilence, like a plague. It is clear that many of Paul's experiences recorded in many places in the book of Acts had resulted in riots or unrest (most notably in Ephesus, but also other places). Tertullus' argument seems to have been that regardless of the fact that it was the Jews' (or Gentiles in Ephesus) hyper-reaction to the preaching of the gospel that brought this unrest, it was Paul's fault for preaching the gospel in the first place. Of course, the real source of the unrest was spiritual kingdoms in conflict, but neither Tertullus nor Felix was going to operate on that plane. Tertullus also went on to badmouth the Roman chiliarch who had rescued Paul from the mob, which was perhaps not the wisest course of action. He did not mention that the soldier's actions were prompted by the attempt by the mob to kill Paul on the spot - twice in two days - without even completing any kind of hearing of the charges.

Acts 23:11-35 The Romans protect Paul from conspiracy

Act 23:11 The Lord appeared to Paul to encourage him. Perhaps Paul was wondering if all this chaos was really honoring Jesus, if he was fulfilling the purpose for which The Lord had sent him to Jerusalem. After all he had accomplished on the mission field, it would have been sad if he had died at the hands of a mob without having really presented the gospel. In any event, Jesus promised him that he had indeed witnessed in Jerusalem and would live long enough to do so in Rome.

Acts 23:12-22 Having failed to get the Romans to do their dirty work, the Jews decided to use duplicity and treachery to murder Paul. At least forty men committed themselves to this task. Somehow Paul's nephew heard about this plot and told Paul, who then had a centurion take him to the commander. We haven't heard anything about Paul's family before this, but apparently they had not excommunicated him. Perhaps he had evangelized them, or perhaps it was simply familial connection. With a conspiracy as large as that described, it would have been hard to keep a secret, and perhaps Paul's nephew was young enough that he was not considered a threat and happened to overhear loose talk.

Acts 23:23-35 The commander did his duty to protect Roman citizens. Seventy cavalry troops and 200 infantry was perhaps an overreaction to forty poorly armed conspirators, fanatical though they might be. At least the issue was not in doubt. The chiliarch sent Paul with a letter to the governor Felix in Caesarea. He explained the situation as he could, not mentioning that he first intended to examine Paul by scourging before finding out he was a Roman citizen. But since his attempts to get at the heart of the matter had left him mystified, and it was clearly a political issue, not a military one, he probably made the pragmatically best choice. The soldiers delivered Paul to Antipatris that night, and then the next day the cavalry took Paul the rest of the way to Caesarea, the reverse of the 120 km journey that Paul had made only a few weeks earlier. Antipatris was a city built by Herod the Great, and named in honour of his father, Antipater II of Judea. It lay between Caesarea Maritima and Lydda, two miles inland, on the great Roman road about halfway between Caesarea and Jerusalem, .

          It is not clear what the significance of Paul being from Cilicia (where Tarsus is) was, but it apparently influenced Felix to hear the case himself. Perhaps he feared to tread on another governor's prerogatives if Paul had been from Judea and the whole matter should be heard locally. Or perhaps he would have preferred to not hear the case and avoid the risk of having to make a decision, but found out that he couldn't because the rules of administration within the Roman Empire made it his responsibility.

Acts 23:1-10 Paul's defense before the Sanhedrin

Acts 23:1-5 Paul begins his defense to the Sanhedrin. The Holy Spirit's purpose in this talk has to be inferred. Paul began with a simple statement that his conscience is clear before God, which caused the high priest to have him struck on the mouth. This was a violation of judicial procedure (Lev 19:15), which Paul immediately pointed out. And then there was a little flurry of discussion about Paul's response. In calling the high priest a white-washed wall, Paul seemed to be paraphrasing some words Jesus had said. (Matthew 23:27) However, when the bystanders pointed out that he had just reviled the high priest, he recognized that was also a violation of the Law of Moses. (Exodus 22:28).

          This all occurred 20-30 years after Jesus had been crucified by the plans and purposes of the High Priest at that time, so doubtless this was a whole new generation of Jewish leaders. However, it appears that their approach to ruling was pretty much unchanged. Lacking the authority to implement capital punishment on those they believed to be heretics, they sought to get the Romans to do their dirty work. It is not clear (and never becomes clear in the Biblical account) whether their biggest issue was that Paul was bringing the Gospel to Gentiles successfully, or that he was successfully evangelizing the Jews and getting them to turn to Jesus, or that he was a threat to their privileged position. There is even the possibility that his words were bringing conviction because of their own sin and their recognition that their own belief system offered them no real release from it. (The fact that Paul looked them in the eye and stated that his conscience was clean before God could easily have made anyone who was still in their sin uncomfortable.) Acts 24:5 suggests that is the conversion of Jews to Christ-followers that was their primary problem with Paul, but that could simply have been the legal argument they presented to the Romans.

Act 23:6-10 At this point, the Holy Spirit led Paul to change tactics, although it is not clear why. Perhaps there was some hope for those who were Pharisees, as Paul had once been, that they might encounter Christ and become converted. The Sadducees were as unspiritual as modern ‘liberal’ Christians, denying  angels, spirits, and life after death. In any event, Paul appealed to one of the core doctrines of the Pharisees that were consistent with Christianity. In a brief statement, he re-opened the dispute within what was probably an uneasy coalition between Pharisees and Sadducees in leading the Jewish faith. As the parties warmed to their respective positions in the dispute, the Roman commander, who was probably mystified by the fervor of this religious debate, took Paul into protective custody again. Having established that Paul was a Roman citizen, he knew he could be held responsible if something happened to him at the hands of the mob.

Acts 22:1-30 Paul attempts to give his testimony

Acts 22:1-16 Paul related his testimony of having been educated under Gamaliel, and then zealous in persecuting the early Christians. He went on to describe his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, how Ananias came and prayed for him, and his baptism.

Acts 22:17-21 Paul went on to explain that he came to Jerusalem and prayed in the temple, when The Lord spoke to him that he could not preach the gospel in Jerusalem, and that He would send Paul to the Gentiles in distant lands.

Acts 22:22 The Jews had been listening to what Paul said to this point, but reacted viscerally to his statement that The Lord had sent him to the Gentiles, at which point they began vehemently demanding his death.

          It is a puzzle as to how the Holy Spirit determined what topics to have Paul discuss in this talk. (Luke 12:11-12) But he did not even get to the presentation of the gospel, as he was only partway through his testimony when the mob erupted and cut him short. Perhaps his credentials as a former Pharisee and also a former persecutor of the church could have gained him an audience. But the fundamental issue was that his ministry was to the Gentiles, and that was anathema to the Jews.

Acts 22:23-30 The Roman commander wanted above all to maintain public order, so he took Paul back into the army barracks and wanted to understand what was causing this riot. When he had Paul prepared to be examined by scourging, Paul played his citizenship card. Having been born a Roman citizen gave him a significant status within the Empire, which the army officer immediately realized. So he took a different tactic to find out what was the cause of all this unrest, bringing Paul and the Sanhedrin together for a face-to-face confrontation.

          One has to feel a bit of sympathy for this Roman officer, who had been assigned to pacify one of the most rebellious provinces in the Empire, who fought over trivial matters of religious doctrine, and refused in practice to accept the official tolerance of the Empire for the wide variety of religions in the lands they controlled. We don't know whether he was acquainted with the history of the Jews, the rebellion of the Maccabees against the Greek successors to Alexander, and/or their earlier history under the various other world empires, such as Babylon, Assyria, the Medes and the Persians.

Acts 21:27-40 Paul Seized in the Temple.

The Jews from Asia were not the believing Jews in Jerusalem, but the Jews who had not believed in Christ, and they had come from Asia, quite likely from the region around Ephesus where Paul had ministered for a few years. It is quite likely they knew Trophimus from their home region; from the text it seems that Trophimus was a Gentile. So they either leaped to the conclusion, or used this as a false accusation for the purpose of inciting a riot. Paul was physically assaulted, but before the rioters could kill him, the Roman army intervened to quell the riot. The Chiliarch (commander of 1,000) was unable to get any meaningful response from the mob. It is not clear if he took Paul into protective custody, or simply wanted to remove him from the mob as the focus of the unrest. The conversation indicates that the Roman officer thought he was an Egyptian who led a revolt a few years earlier in Jerusalem. Perhaps this was because of the size and violence of the mob. These assassins were not the assassins we more typically think of in history, the cult of assassins that was prominent in eleventh through thirteenth centuries A.D., and were not located in Israel, but in Western Iran, centered in Alamut. Furthermore, they were from the Ismaili sect of Islam, not Jewish. The assassins referred to here were labeled with a Roman term for a public bandit murderer, transliterated to Greek as sikarios.

          Paul indicated that he was a Roman citizen and asked permission to speak to the crowd. Being a Roman citizen was a fairly significant card that Paul only played sparingly, but here he put it to good use, to get an opportunity to present the gospel in Jerusalem.