Acts 24:25

Acts 24:25. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled. The subjects upon which Paul seems to have spoken when summoned before Felix and Drusilla, on first thoughts appear to us somewhat strange. No doubt they were very different to the themes the governor and his wife expected to have heard dwelt upon by the imprisoned Nazarene leader, he hoping probably, as a politician, to learn more of the relations existing between the sect in which Paul was so distinguished a leader, and the dominant Jewish schools of thought; and the Jewish princess expecting doubtless to hear from the lips of the Christian preacher something of the teaching, and perhaps new details respecting the death, of the Founder of his faith. One in the position of Drusilla had, too, no doubt heard strange rumours of the visions of Paul. She would hear from his own lips what had convinced one who, in early life, had been so famous a Pharisee what had determined a man with the bright onlooks of the young Saul to throw in his lot with a despised and persecuted sect.

But both Felix and Drusilla were disappointed. The Christian teacher apparently never touched on the ‘evidences of his faith,' said nothing of his own life nothing in connection with his own experience of shame at the hands of men, or of surpassing glory at the hands of God. With that marvellous power none seem to have been possessed like the inspired Paul, he spoke of ‘life' rather than of ‘doctrine,' with evidently special reference to the brilliant but mistaken lives of the pair who, surrounded with all the majesty of the ensign of the great Empire, sat in royal state, while he stood a friendless, poor-clad prisoner before them.

It is doubtful if many besides the personal attendants were present at this hearing or hearings of the accused. Most likely Paul gave Luke a very short description of what took place. The three famous words rendered ‘righteousness,' ‘temperance,' and ‘judgment to come,' were without doubt Paul's own expressions. Luke took them down from his master's lips. Our English translation very poorly represents the Greek original ‘ of righteousness ' (περι ̀ δικαιοσυ ́ νης) or ‘justice,' a word embracing those varied duties which every upright citizen owes to another, how much more one set over his fellows as a judge! Such a reminder, couched in the burning words of a Paul, must indeed have struck home to the heart of the unscrupulous covetous Roman satrap, who only looked upon his high office as a source of gain to himself. ‘ Temperance.' ε ̓ γκρατει ́ ας, is very inadequately Englished by ‘temperance.' The Greek word has a far broader significance; it denotes especially ‘self-control,' the power of conquering one's own passions and lusts. The virtue was not unknown even in the story of Pagan Rome; and Felix' companion, the Jewess Drusilla, would call up before her mind many a fair example set by noble Hebrew matrons in the old days of Israel, an example she had never tried to follow! ‘ Judgment to come.' No doubt this theme was especially brought into prominence owing to the fact of the ‘resurrection of the dead,' both of the just and unjust, forming so central a feature in Paul's teaching, and also because it was the subject of part of his defence when he was tried before the Sanhedrim, and before Felix (Acts 24:15, and chap, Acts 23:6; Acts 23:8). We can picture Paul's oratory on these momentous occasions, speaking his Master's words before two such perfect representatives of the old world the man, the heir of Pagan tradition, the unjust judge, the selfish ruler, the evil example to all that luxurious society in which he reigned as chief, living for the day, utterly careless of the future thoroughly and earnestly carrying out the Pagan teachers' cheerless advice, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' The woman, a fair specimen of the Jewess of the last age of Jerusalem, when the people loved with a strange passionate fervour the doctrine and ritual of Moses and his interpreters, but allowed neither doctrine nor ritual to touch or affect the inner life. The characters of Caiaphas and Annas, and of the sisters Drusilla and Bernice, were the natural outcome of the teaching of the Rabbinic schools so sternly condemned by the Lord Jesus.

We can well imagine from what armoury Paul had drawn those weapons which pierced the triple-guarded breast of the selfish and courtly Roman voluptuary, and left him quivering with a nameless terror. No doubt among those precious parchments we read of in his last sad words to Timothy not many years later (2 Timothy 4:13), were records written by the older apostles, men who had been with the Lord during the days of His earthly teaching memories of the Divine words uttered in those solemn hours of communion, and many of which we now possess, most precious gems, set in the gold of the gospel setting. No doubt, too, in his frequent intercourse in past years with Barnabas, with men like Philip, in his rarer meetings with the holy Twelve, had Paul heard, not once nor twice, the treasured words of Jesus, the Master's solemn teaching as to the true meaning of righteousness, the glorious beauty of chastity and self-conquest, His many-coloured pictures of the awful judgment morning. And when, moved by the Holy Spirit, he repeated to the Roman governor these words of the Risen One, whom he (Paul) had beheld, not as the others had seen Him in His poor earth dress, but once more clothed with His glory robes, and girt with the light of heaven, Felix, trained in a school which taught its scholars to believe in nothing, to hope for nothing, to dread nothing Felix the Epicurean, the atheist, the selfish scoffer at truth and honour, at innocence and purity, as he listened to the Nazarene's definition of justice and self-conquest, as he gazed on his picture of the future judgment of the just and the unjust, with Drusilla the Herodian princess by his side Felix, we read, trembled.

And answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee. But the alarm caused by Paul's burning words of truth had no permanent effect, at least not then; the only effect they appear to have had was, that he sent away Paul. ‘He does not resent,' well writes a recent commentator, ‘his plainness of speech; he shows a certain measure of respect for him; but he postpones acting till a more convenient season, and so becomes a type of the millions whose spiritual life is ruined by a like procrastination. Nothing that we know of him gives us any ground for thinking that the convenient season ever came.' Singularly enough, after two years, Felix, accused by the Jewish people, was summoned to Rome to give an account of his Judæan stewardship to the emperor. Thus, by the providence of God, he was once more in the same city with Paul. Did he then avail himself of that ‘convenient season'? The recording angel alone knows.