Paul’s Defense
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 18 March 2018
It starts out as the trial of Paul before Felix, and it ends up as the trial of Felix before Paul. Here is an illustration of the tragedy of postponing a decision about Christ. Acts 24:24-25 says, “And after some days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. 25 Now as he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered, “Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you.”
Jesus commented on discipleship in Luke 9:57-61, “someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” In the back of his mind he was thinking, "That's the way I'll get to the top." Jesus said, “You will suffer if you follow Me. I have no worldly goods.” The man never followed.
Look at the next man. Here, he is invited by the Lord to follow Him. But he answered, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father." Well, the point was, the father wasn't even dead yet. He was really saying, "Yes, I'll follow You as soon as I get my inheritance." What was the implication? Lack of faith. "I'm not going to preach the kingdom without any money to support myself." Did not trust Jesus.
Look at the third one who said, "Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” I want to go home and get everything fixed up and in order." Jesus said, "No man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." That's procrastination, materialistic motive, lack of faith, and the third guy puts worldly issues first.
People who postpone are gambling with their lives. This is what happens when a person continually rejects. Even though he has good intentions of someday, that someday begins to fade. Luke 13:24 says, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” The narrow gate is the way of salvation. “For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” Few will be saved, verse 23 says. Because your own heart can become hard.
Secondly, God stops calling after a certain point. In the pre-Noah time, God said, "My Spirit will not always strive with man.” We meet such a man named Felix in Acts 24. Now in this passage, we find Paul and Felix confronting each other in a trial. We have been looking at it from Paul's viewpoint and as we conclude our study, we will look at it from the viewpoint of God and Felix.
The Jewish leaders desired to kill Paul. They had one great fear, and that was that they would lose their authority, their power, their prestige and position in the eyes of the people. So anyone who came along and won a great following of the people was really a threat. Paul had great success in winning Jews to Christ, and of course, the leaders began to be fearful, so they set about to kill him.
They had tried to kill him three times in a riotous situation, and once they had tried to kill him with a plotted ambush. After those four attempts, the Romans finally decided to get Paul out of town to save his life because Paul, after all, was a Roman citizen and they had to protect him. Secondly, he had committed no crime. So the Romans brought him down to Caesarea and put him in protective custody.
The accusers of the Jews went to Caesarea to bring the case before Felix. And then these accusers came, attempting to get Paul executed for crimes of which they will accuse him. Paul has been in Caesarea for five days, waiting for his accusers to arrive. Finally they get there. They hired a certain lawyer named Tertullus to inform Felix as to what Paul had done.
He praised Felix, thanking him for all he has done. That was just flattery; they really hated Felix, and Felix knew it. Here is their case: "We have found this man to be a nuisance." They had three accusations. First, treason. He is a threat to the security of Rome because he leads the Jews in insurrection. He leads the Jews to riot against Rome.
Secondly sectarianism; they accuse him of being a ringleader of the Nazarenes, who were Christians. That is what they had called Jesus, the Nazarene. When they put on the cross “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” that was supposed to be a mockery. This implied, too, that it had political overtones, because many similar sects of Judaism were militant.
Thirdly, they accused him of sacrilege. "Who also has gone about to profane the temple." There were territories in the temple forbidden to Gentiles, and they accused Paul of bringing a Gentile into the place. He hadn't done it, it was a lie like the rest of them. Then they said, "Whom we took and would have judged according to our law," but of course, that was a lie too. They wanted to kill him in that riot.
Then Lysias came and took Paul away because they were trying to kill him. And he commanded his accusers to come to you. “So if you will just examine Lysias," verse 8 says, "He will tell you that what we say is true." Then they brought their witnesses in verse 9, and they all said, "That's right, we all say he did that." So they had prosecution from their lawyer and witnesses to agree to it. But these were all lies.
Now let's look at the defense, and watch how Paul defends himself. He does it calmly, courteously, and categorically. Verse 10-11, “Then Paul, after the governor had nodded to him to speak, answered: “Inasmuch as I know that you have been for many years a judge of this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself, 11 because you may ascertain that it is no more than twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship.”
Notice that Paul doesn't have a lawyer. No, he had someone better than a human lawyer. When Jesus was leaving He told His disciples, in the Gospel of John, that He was going to send another Comforter. The word 'comforter' is from parakletos, 'a lawyer for the defense'. He didn't have a human lawyer, but he had the divine lawyer for his defense.
Every word he said to Felix was the word of the Holy Spirit. So it was Paul talking, but it was the Holy Spirit moving through him. Paul says, "Felix, you have been a judge long enough around here to make a fair evaluation, so I am glad to give my case." Felix had been governor for five years. Prior to that, he was under Cumanus, the governor of Samaria, for four years. So for at least nine years, he was acquainted with Jewish affairs.
Now, you would have to know Jewish customs to make any judgment in regard to Jewish affairs. Paul is, in effect, saying, "Felix, I know that you have been around long enough to know that this is a theological problem, and to know the real reasons behind this, and I am glad to give my defense, because I know that you understand that." He was telling the truth and there is no flattery here.
Flattery, for a Christian, is unacceptable at all times. Flattery is when you say something that is beyond the truth to elicit something for yourself. When you hear Tertullus say, "Oh, most wonderful Felix, oh, most noble, ect, ect." It's not true; and everybody knew it and Felix knew it. Proverbs 26:28 says, "A flattering mouth works ruin," and Psalm 12:3 says, "The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips."
So Paul replies first to the charge of sedition in verses 11-12, “Because you may ascertain that it is no more than twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship. 12 And they neither found me in the temple disputing with anyone nor inciting the crowd, either in the synagogues or in the city.” Paul is saying, "I haven't had time to start a riot.” And that is right.
He did not have the personal responsibility of ministry there. Why would he feel that way? Acts 22:17-18, 21 says, “Now it happened, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance 18 and saw Him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me.’ 21 Then He said to me, ‘Depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles.’”
Jesus Christ Himself, by direct revelation to Paul, said he was not responsible for the ministry in Jerusalem. There were already tens of thousands of Jewish Christians there and evangelism, for the most part, in the city of Jerusalem, was a one-to-one thing. They were winning others. So Paul did not sense this tremendous drive for confrontation that he sensed in other places, so he had done none of these things.
Verse 13, “Nor can they prove the things of which they now accuse me.” So he denies the charges and makes clear the fact that they can't prove them. He has done nothing treasonous. Secondly they accused him of sectarianism; being a heretic. Paul cannot deny his Christianity, but he also wants to make sure he denies their charge.
Verses 14-16, “But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets. 15 I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. 16 This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.”
The Way is the title of Christianity. Jesus said, "I am the way." Peter said in Acts 4:12, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Peter even uses it in 2 Peter 2:2, “And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.” So Paul says, I am a believer in the Way and I truly worship my God; and I believe all of His revelation, including resurrection.
The high priests are the real heretics, who have ceased worshiping God, because there is only one way to God. Jesus said, "No man comes to the Father but by Me.” If you believe the Law and the Prophets, you have to believe in Christ, because all they talked about was Christ. They had charged him with belonging to a subversive offshoot of Judaism. Paul denies it, while at the same time he affirms that he is a Christian.
Paul says that Christianity is true Judaism, and Judaism without Christianity is the same as worshipping a totem pole. They are heretics because they don't worship the true God, because you can't worship Him except through His Messiah. They don't believe the Scriptures, because if they believed the Scriptures, they would worship the Messiah. Add to that they don't even believe in the hope of Israel, which is the resurrection.
Becoming a Christian is not forsaking the God of Israel, it's coming to Him the only way: through Christ. Paul was a completed Jew. Romans 2:28, "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; he is a Jew who is one inwardly. His circumcision is not of the flesh but it is of the heart." The only true Jews in the world are Christian ones. The rest are apostate. The true Jew is the one who continues to obey God through the Messiah.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16:22, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.” In Romans 9:6, Paul says the same thing, "All Israel is not Israel." Paul is saying, I'm the only true Jew here who has come to the Messiah. In addition, he says, "I believe all things that are written in the law and the prophets." Why? If you believe the Old Testament law and the prophets, you have to believe in Christ.
Most Jews reject Christ, so then they have to also reject the Old Testament. That's why today, most Jews don't believe in the literal truth of the Old Testament. They have explained it all away. The only thing they live by is the Judaistic ethic. In fact, most Jews don't even believe in a Messiah anymore, they believe in a Messianic era. But to deny Jesus as the Messiah is to deny the Old Testament.
Jesus said in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” In Luke 24:27 on the road to Emmaus, Jesus opened up the Old Testament, “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” You can't study the Old Testament and not come to Christ.
Even though I have not been born into Israel, I am better off and so are you, as a Gentile Christian, than an unbelieving Jew. Luke 12:48 says, “To whom much is given, much will be required.” Romans 11 says that God, in His wonderful grace, chose to graft us in. The unbelieving branch was cut off, and God grafted us in. But the Bible says there will come a time when Israel is also going to be grafted back in. In fact, then all Israel shall be saved.
The traditional hope of the Jew was the resurrection. Isaiah 26:19, Job 19:26, Daniel 12:2, in the Old Testament all taught resurrection. Abraham believed in a resurrection, that's why he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. Paul says, as one who believes in God and His word, and in the hope of the resurrection, that causes me to want to live a pure life. I don't want to offend God, and I don't want to offend man."
You ought to live a life that fits the Word of God if you really believe it. Paul stood up and said, "I'm innocent. Check my life." Can you do that? Can you stand before the world blameless, void of offense? So Paul defends himself and sets the stage for the verdict, which we will discuss the next time. Let us pray.