Felix - Acts 24:24-27

Felix keeps Paul prisoner, but at least he’s making it comfortable by letting Paul have visitors and stay in the judgment hall. Felix is waiting for Lysias, the chief captain to come and testify about the events in the temple that led to Paul’s arrest. Lysias is the one who had his soldiers pull Paul out of the crowd when the Pharisees and Sadducees started trying to kill him, and the one who transferred Paul to Felix when the Jewish leadership conspired to kill him. Felix is waiting for Lysias because Paul’s accusers didn’t bother to show up to testify against him, but the Jewish leadership did send out a professional speaker to try and persuade Felix to convict Paul of being a nuisance.

While waiting for Lysias, “Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ.” While his wife is knew of Jewish doctrine, Felix was a gentile, and honestly, not a very good person. From the research that I’ve done, which was minimal, I learned that after Felix was replaced, he was tried and convicted of governing with cruelty and corruption. Thus we see that the light of Christ is in every man and can draw people to the gospel that we wouldn’t expect. The IM says, “Despite his corrupt nature, Felix was deeply moved by Paul’s testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Along with his powerful personal testimony of Christ, Paul also “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Felix wasn’t the worst ruler ever, but it is significant that he was tried for crimes against his subjects once he was relieved of his command. Listening to this “History of Rome” podcast has really helped me understand the dynamics between Rome and the her subjects. For the most part, as long as they kept their province quiet and the taxes paid, the governors could do whatever they wanted. For his conduct to be bad enough that higher Roman officials felt the need to convict him after he got back to Rome, it must have been bad enough that the taxes and peace didn’t matter.
Felix was neither righteous nor temperate, and surely didn’t want to be called on to the carpet to answer for his lifestyle and Paul’s words were so powerful that “Felix trembled, and answered, go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” While it would have been amazing if Felix had been moved to the point of falling on his knees and begging God for forgiveness, like King Lamoni and his father, who when confronted with the truth, recognized the error of their ways and repented.
I would think that Lamoni’s father had the most power when compared to Lamoni and Felix, because he was the ultimate rulers over probably tens of thousands of people. But he still recognized the truth when he saw it, which just goes to show us that people have to be ready in order to accept the gospel. And just because he didn’t repent and get baptized right that second, we don’t know exactly what impact Paul’s teachings had on Felix. He could have spent the rest of his life thinking about those words, maybe he thought twice about the wicked things he did after that. Who knows, everyone’s salvation comes at their own pace.
Felix decides he can’t deal with all this right now and sends Paul away again until he is ready. And it might give us some pause to question the impact of Paul’s words because Felix leaves Paul incarcerated for two more years because “be hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.” So he is definitely still keeping up his corruption, and I think that when Paul said that he “came to bring alms to my nation, and offering” that’s where Felix might have realized that Paul had some stash of money somewhere.
Felix knew that Paul wasn’t guilty of anything, and he knew that he should have been released, but he kept Paul imprisoned for several different reasons, one being that he hoped for Paul to bribe him, but the other was because he was “willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.” Felix was hoping to keep some sort of political leverage over the Jewish leadership by keeping Paul away from them like they wanted. But it appears that Paul was never desperate enough to try and bribe Felix for his freedom, nor to convince others to do so on his behalf. And we have to think and hope that the conversations between Paul and Felix throughout those two years did contain some elements of the gospel.
After Paul spent two years in the custody of Felix, “Porcius Festus came into Felix’s room,” which I believe means that Festus took over Felix’s governorship. Now Festus is in charge, let’s see what he does, next time.