Acts Chapter 25: The Appeal That Changed Everything

Festus arrived as the new governor and within three days made the politically necessary visit to Jerusalem. The chief priests and leading Jews presented their case against Paul immediately and urged Festus to transfer him to Jerusalem — where they planned to ambush and kill him along the road. Festus said: let the men of authority among you go down with me and if there is anything wrong about the man let them bring charges against him there.

After no more than eight or ten days Festus went down to Caesarea. The next day he sat on the judgment seat and ordered Paul brought in. The Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him bringing many serious charges they could not prove. Paul’s defense was the same: neither against the Torah of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.

Festus, wanting to do the Jews a favor, said: are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and be tried on these charges before me there? Paul said: I am standing before Caesar’s judgment seat where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong as you yourself know very well. If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.

The Appeal and Its Consequences

I appeal to Caesar. Three words in Latin. Appellatio Caesarem. The fundamental right of Roman citizenship: to have your case heard before the emperor rather than a provincial governor. Once invoked it could not be withdrawn. The case immediately transferred jurisdiction. Festus conferred with his council and said: to Caesar you have appealed. To Caesar you will go.

The appeal was not primarily about Paul’s personal safety, though it guaranteed that. It was the fulfillment of what Yehovah had told him in the barracks: you must testify in Rome. The way to Rome ran through Caesar’s court. Paul’s Roman citizenship — the accident of his birth in Tarsus that he had not chosen and had rarely mentioned — was the mechanism Yehovah had placed in his life decades earlier for exactly this moment. Nothing in the preparation was wasted. Nothing in the timing was accidental.

Several days later King Agrippa arrived at Caesarea with his sister Bernice to pay their respects to Festus. They stayed many days. Festus laid Paul’s case before Agrippa: there is a man left prisoner by Felix, about whom the chief priests and elders of the Jews laid out their case when I was in Jerusalem and asked for judgment against him. I answered them that it was not custom among Romans to give up any man before the accused had met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make a defense. When they came here I made no delay. The next day I took my seat on the judgment seat and ordered the man brought. The accusers stood up but brought no charge of such evils as I supposed. Rather they had certain points of dispute about their own religion and about a certain Yeshua who was dead but whom Paul asserted to be alive.

A certain Yeshua who was dead but whom Paul asserted to be alive. Festus summarizes the entire gospel of Acts in one awkward sentence. He did not know what to do with it. He could not find a charge. He could not find a crime. He had a prisoner, an appeal to Caesar, and a religious dispute about a resurrection he had no framework for understanding.

Agrippa said to Festus: I would like to hear the man myself. Tomorrow, said Festus, you will hear him.

Next: Acts Chapter 26 — The Defense That Became a Sermon