Acts 24:22 - Meaning and Application

Here we see the result of Paul’s trial before Felix and what followed from it. Felix delayed the case and gave himself more time to think it over (Acts 24:22). He knew more about “that Way,” the Christian faith, than the high priest and elders had assumed. Living in Caesarea, he had likely heard from Cornelius, the Roman centurion who had become a Christian, and from others that Christianity was not the evil thing its enemies claimed.

Felix also knew that some people who followed this Way were honest, good, and careful about their conscience. So he sent the accusers away with an excuse: when the chief captain came down, he would look into the matter more fully. In effect, he was saying that Paul and the Jewish leaders were both interested parties, and he wanted the truth from someone more neutral. Either Paul had caused the riot and deserved punishment, or the accusers themselves had caused it and were wrongly blaming him. Felix would hear more and decide accordingly.

This was a disappointment to the high priest and elders, because they had hoped Paul would be condemned or handed over to them. But God often restrains the anger of his people’s enemies through people who are not their friends. If even strangers have some understanding of God’s way, they may still speak up for his people’s protection.

It was also an injury to Paul, because Felix should have set him free. He clearly saw that the case was driven by malice, and a judge should rescue the innocent from evil hands (Psalm 82:4). But Felix was a man who did not fear God or care much about people, so little good could be expected from him. It is a wrong not only to deny justice, but also to delay it.

Felix kept Paul in custody and refused to accept bail, though Paul had friends in Caesarea who would gladly have secured his release. Since Paul was a public figure, Felix may have thought he could use the situation to gain favor or manage his relationships with both sides. So he kept Paul imprisoned, and ordered a centurion, a Roman army officer, to guard him (Acts 24:23). Yet Paul was not thrown into a common jail. He was kept in relatively easy confinement, with the freedom of the castle, and likely some liberty to move about on his word of honor.

The Jews wanted Paul’s life taken, but Felix at least allowed him a measure of freedom. He did not share their hatred for Paul or for the Christian faith. He also ordered that none of Paul’s friends be stopped from visiting him. The guard was not to keep his companions away from him. A prison becomes much lighter when friends are allowed to come and minister to the prisoner.

Afterward, Felix often spoke with Paul in private, and one meeting is singled out here, not long after the public hearing (Acts 24:24, Acts 24:25). Felix wanted to talk about the faith in Christ. He had some knowledge of Christianity already, but he wanted to hear about it directly from Paul, who was known as a leading preacher of that faith. People who want to learn more should speak with those who know the matter well. Felix may also have wanted to satisfy his curiosity, or the curiosity of his wife Drusilla, a Jewish woman and daughter of Herod Agrippa, who had been eaten by worms. Raised in the Jewish religion, she would naturally be curious about Christianity, which claimed to bring the old faith to completion.

But Drusilla’s interest did not make her life any better. She was a shame to the religion she came from and to the life she was living. She had been another man’s wife when Felix took her, and she lived with him in adultery. Still, she wanted to hear about the faith of Christ. Many people enjoy hearing new religious ideas and discussing them, but they do not want religion to govern their lives. They are happy for their minds to be informed, while their conduct remains unchanged.

Paul answered them with practical truth. They may have expected something mystical or speculative, but he spoke about righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment. He likely did mention the central truths of Christianity, including the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and his work as Mediator, meaning the one who brings God and man together. But he quickly moved to the application, aiming at their consciences.

He spoke clearly and earnestly about righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. In doing so, he showed that faith in Christ is meant to strengthen the great laws of justice and self-control. God’s grace teaches us to live self-controlled and upright lives (Titus 2:12). Even the pagan moral teachers praised justice and temperance, so if Paul’s message only meant freedom from such duties, Felix might have welcomed it at once. But Paul taught the opposite. Christ’s gospel binds people more firmly to honesty, fairness, self-denial, and mastery over the body.

By baptism, believers have renounced the world and the flesh, so all their pursuits and pleasures must now be governed by religion. Paul spoke of righteousness and temperance to confront Felix with his own injustice and lack of self-control, sins for which he was well known. He wanted Felix to see how ugly those sins were and how exposed he was to God’s wrath because of them (Ephesians 5:6). Then, seeing that danger, Felix might have sought the faith of Christ with a sincere heart.

By Christ’s teaching, we learn about the judgment to come. That judgment will finally and permanently decide the lasting state of every human being. People may have their own day now, and Felix had his, but God’s day is coming, when everyone will give an account to God, the Judge of all. Paul reasoned about this, meaning he showed why we should believe in a coming judgment and why that truth should move us to live faithfully.

From this account of Paul’s main points, we can see several things. Paul did not show favoritism in his preaching, because God’s word shows no favoritism either. He pressed the same truths and warnings on the Roman governor that he did on other people. He also aimed at people’s consciences, not their curiosity or their pride. He wanted them to see their sins and understand their duty and true good.

Paul valued serving Christ and saving souls more than his own safety. Felix had power over him, including the power to release him or keep him in prison. Paul had a chance to win Felix over, smooth things out, and perhaps even stir Felix against his accusers, but he ignored all that. He cared most about doing good and fulfilling his duty. He was also willing to work hard and take risks even where success seemed unlikely. Felix and Drusilla, Felix’s wife, were so hardened in sin that it seemed unlikely Paul would move them to repentance, especially under such unfavorable conditions. Yet Paul still dealt with them as someone who did not give up on them.

We also see what effect Paul’s message had on this powerful but wicked man. Felix trembled, meaning he was suddenly frightened and became a terror to himself, like Pashur in (Jeremiah 20:3-4). Paul did not tremble before Felix, but Felix trembled before Paul. He seemed to think, “If Paul is right, what will happen to me in the next world? If the unrighteous and self-indulgent are condemned in the judgment to come, then I am lost forever unless I change my life.” We are not told that Drusilla trembled, though she was just as guilty. She was a Jewess and likely leaned on the ceremonial law, trusting it to excuse her. Felix, however, had no comfort to calm his conscience, so he trembled.

Here we see the power of God’s word when it comes with divine authority. It searches the heart, startles the sinner, and can strike fear into the proudest and boldest person by laying sins open and showing God’s terrors. We also see the work of natural conscience. When conscience is awakened, it fills the soul with horror over its own ugliness and danger. Those who are feared by others in this life can become terrified of themselves when their conscience is stirred. The thought of the coming judgment is enough to make even the strongest heart tremble. When that day truly comes, even mighty rulers will cry out to rocks and mountains for hiding, and it will be useless.

Felix then tried to shake off the fear Paul’s words had brought on him. He handled those convictions the same way he handled Paul’s accusers, he put them off. He said, “Go away for now. When I have a good time, I will send for you.” He trembled, but that was all. Paul’s trembling in (Acts 9:6), and the jailer’s trembling in (Acts 16:29), ended in conversion, but Felix’s did not. Many people are shaken by God’s word but are never truly changed by it. Many fear sin’s consequences and still love sin itself.

Felix did not fight against his convictions. He did not attack Paul or the message because it troubled his conscience. He did not threaten Paul with harsher treatment or death for speaking to him about his sin, as Herod treated John the Baptist. Instead, he cleverly pushed the matter away by delaying it. He had nothing solid to object to in Paul’s words. They were serious and worth thinking about. But like a debtor asking for more time, he said in effect, “Stop here for now. I am busy. When I have a more convenient time, I will call for you and hear more.”

Many people lose the benefit of conviction because they do not act while the matter is still fresh. If Felix, while trembling, had asked, as Paul and the jailer did, “What should I do?” he might have come to faith in Christ and been truly happy forever. Instead, by putting off his conviction, he lost it, and lost himself with it. In the work of the soul, delay is dangerous. Nothing is more harmful than putting off repentance and conversion from one time to another. People say they will repent and turn to God, but not yet. They wait for a better season, after some task is finished or when they are older. Then the conviction fades, good intentions come to nothing, and they grow even harder in evil.

Felix put the matter off to a “more convenient” time, but we are not told that the time ever came. The devil cheats us out of all our time by cheating us out of the present moment. The present time is, without doubt, the best time. “Now is the accepted time” and “today, if you hear his voice” are the words we must remember.

After all this, Felix still kept Paul in prison, and Paul remained there until Felix was removed from office two years later, in (Acts 24:26-27). Felix was convinced in his conscience that Paul had done nothing deserving death or even imprisonment, yet he still lacked the honesty to set him free. Paul had reasoned with him about righteousness, and Felix had trembled at the thought of his own wrongdoing, yet he still went on in plain injustice. The reason was even worse than simple weakness: he was ruled by the love of money.

He would not release Paul because he hoped to make money from him. He wanted, in time, to have Paul’s friends pay for his freedom. That way he could ease his conscience by setting Paul free, while also feeding his greed. He could not bring himself to do his duty as a judge unless he could profit from it.

He hoped money would be given to him by Paul, or by someone on Paul’s behalf, and then he would release him. In that hope, he kept Paul in prison and sent for him often to talk with him. But he no longer wanted to hear about the faith of Christ. He had already heard enough about Christ and about the coming judgment, so Paul was not to return to those subjects. Instead, Felix wanted to talk about Paul’s release, or really about the price of his release.

Felix was too ashamed to plainly ask Paul what he would give him. So he sent for him to test the waters and gave Paul a chance to ask what it would take to free him. In this, we see what became of his promise, both to Paul and to himself, that he would hear more about Christ at another convenient time. He had many convenient times to speak about that matter, but nothing came of it. His only concern now was to get money from Paul, not to learn Christ from him.

It is right with God to say of people who play with their convictions and think they can call on God’s grace whenever they want, “My Spirit will not keep striving with them.” When people refuse to hear God’s voice today, while it is still called today, their hearts often grow harder through sin’s deceit. Paul was a poor man himself and had no silver or gold to buy his freedom. But Felix knew Paul had friends who cared about him and could help. Paul had recently gathered much money for the poor saints, that is, needy believers, so it might have been expected that the richer saints would give something to free him. I am surprised they did not.

Paul is to be praised because he would not offer money to Felix, and would not beg money from the churches, since his noble and generous spirit would not stoop to either. Yet I do not know whether his friends should be praised for not doing it for him. They ought to have urged the governor on his behalf as strongly as his enemies urged him against Paul. If a gift was needed to open the way to important people, as Solomon says, they might lawfully have done it. A person should not bribe a judge to do what is wrong. But if a judge will not do right without a fee, then giving it is only getting justice for yourself. If they could have done this, it was a shame that they did not.

I am ashamed for them that they would let such a great and useful man as Paul stay in jail when a little money could have freed him and sent him back to his work. The Christians in Caesarea, where Paul was then kept, had once wept to keep him from prison (Acts 21:13). Could they not also part with money to help him out? Still, God may have had a purpose in it. Paul’s chains were meant to help spread the gospel of Christ, so he had to remain in bonds. Even so, this does not excuse Felix, who should have released an innocent man without asking for, or taking, anything in return. A judge who will not do right without a bribe will surely do wrong for a bribe.

Felix also acted from a desire to please people. About two years later, he was removed from office, and Porcius Festus took his place. One would have expected Felix to end his rule with an act of justice and free Paul, but he did not. He left Paul bound, because he wanted to do the Jews a favor. He would not hand Paul over to death just to satisfy them, but he would keep him in prison rather than offend them. He hoped this would make up for the many offenses he had already committed against them.

He did not think Paul had the influence or the desire to complain about him at court for keeping him in custody so long against law and fairness. But he feared that the high priest and the elders might accuse him to the emperor for the wrongs he had done them. So he hoped that by pleasing them in this matter, he could keep them quiet. People who do shameful things are often tempted to do more shameful things to cover themselves and support what they have already done. If Felix had not wronged the Jews before, he would not have needed to do this to please them. But even after doing it, he did not get what he wanted. The Jews still accused him to the emperor, and some historians say Festus sent him to Rome in chains. If so, Felix’s memory of how lightly he treated Paul’s chains would surely make his own chains feel heavier.

Those who try to please God by doing good will get what they seek. But it is not so with those who try to please people by doing evil.