INCONVENIENT TRUTH
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Sometimes, fear will prompt people to re-examine their lives and turn to God. This happened in Ephesus after dangerous encounters with evil spirits (see Acts 19:11–20). But sometimes fear causes people to pull back and avoid the gospel invitation.
Such was Felix’s response to Paul’s testimony.
Felix was procurator of Judea for most of the decade of the 50s A.D. Historians of his time regarded him as a cruel and ruthless ruler.
Perhaps this is why Paul “talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come”—and why these topics caused Felix such discomfort, prompting him to put off Paul’s appeal to a more “convenient” time. Felix’s fear was the working of his conscience and his opportunity to repent, to choose a different ending to his story.
However, Felix was a successor to Pilate as procurator of Judea, and he seems to have shared his predecessor’s hesitation (read, fear) to make a courageous decision, even though they each recognized the baseless nature of the respective cases against Jesus and Paul. Throughout his involvement with Paul’s case, Felix tried to keep everyone happy. He seemed to want to befriend Paul—talking with him frequently and hoping for a bribe to secure his release (see Acts 24:26)—and to pander to his Jewish accusers at the same time, particularly by leaving Paul in prison when he himself was recalled to Rome. Fear wrote Felix out of history, with nothing more known about him after he left Paul in prison in Caesarea.
But more importantly, it left him unchanged, afraid of who he was, afraid to choose differently, and perpetually putting off the inconvenience of the gospel.
