Acts 24:1-9 (NIV)
Five days later the high priest Ananias went down to Caesarea with some of the elders and a lawyer named Tertullus, and they brought their charges against Paul before the governor. When Paul was called in, Tertullus presented his case before Felix: “We have enjoyed a long period of peace under you, and your foresight has brought about reforms in this nation. Everywhere and in every way, most excellent Felix, we acknowledge this with profound gratitude. But in order not to weary you further, I would request that you be kind enough to hear us briefly.
“We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect and even tried to desecrate the temple; so we seized him. By examining him yourself you will be able to learn the truth about all these charges we are bringing against him.”
The Jews joined in the accusation, asserting that these things were true.
The Jewish leaders had no choice now but to play by the rules. With Paul safely ensconced in a Roman prison, they had to officially accuse him in court. Since it was a Roman court, they hired a Roman Lawyer, Tertullus, to present their case.
As Paul stated in his defense (verse 11), the time from the riot in the temple to this day had been only twelve days. But the scene had changed radically. The Jewish leaders were no longer on their turf in Jerusalem, but in the Roman city of Caesarea on the coast. And they were not in charge of the proceedings as they would have been in the Sanhedrin. Instead, they were merely one side in the legal proceedings, presided over by the Roman governor, Felix.
As was normal in Roman court proceedings, the prosecution began by presenting the case against the accused. In this case, the charges brought against Paul were those tending toward sedition, attempts at undermining peace in the empire, and thus indirect assaults against the emperor and his authority. Specifically:
- That Paul was an agitator, causing unrest in many places throughout the empire. There actually had been much unrest in many places that Paul had gone, but the unrest was not directly fomented by Paul. Instead, it was almost always caused by the Jews’ jealousy and their attempts to remove Paul so that he and his message would cease to be competition for them.
- That he was a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, the people also known as Christians. This was true. But that in and of itself was no crime in the empire. Until Nero blamed the great fire of Rome (AD 64) on the Christians and used them as scapegoats to turn suspicion away from himself, Christians were considered by Rome to merely be a sect of Judaism. But the words used by Tertullus, especially the characterization of Paul as a “ringleader”, and Christianity as a “sect”, were designed to cast him in a sinister light.
- The he tried to desecrate the temple, presumably by bringing gentiles into its sacred areas (Acts 21:28-29), thus disturbing the peace. This was a risky charge, first because it wasn’t something that the Roman government would really care about. But also, because it was not true and couldn’t be proved. But it provided the only grounds for the initial uprising and detention of Paul so, risky as it was, it had to be presented as part of the case.
Like many false accusations, most of these charges had a grain of truth to them. But to be seen as legitimate, the truth in them had to be skewed and twisted so as to make Paul appear in the worst possible light. Similar tactics were used in the framing of Jesus before Pilate, which was successful in winning a condemnation and execution. The leaders were hoping for repeated success. But God had other plans.
Father, Paul was bolstered by the clear promise of Jesus that he would not die in Israel but would at least make it to Rome to testify. So, even though the deck seemed irredeemably stacked against him (he was provided no lawyer in the roman court), he knew that his ultimate fate was in far more competent hands than his own. Help us to have that same assurance whenever we face troubles, trials, hardships, even persecutions, because we also have many good promises from Jesus (John 14:27, 15:10, 17:33 and many others). Amen.
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