Acts 24:22

Paul is remanded, and remains imprisoned at Cæsarea, 22, 23.

Acts 24:22. And when Felix heard these things, having more perfect knowledge of that way, he deferred them, and said, When Lysias the chief captain shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter. There is little doubt but that Felix would have liberated the prisoner after hearing his defence, had not the same motives fear of the Jews influenced him at this juncture which induced him two years later, when he was removed from his office, still to leave Paul bound. The tyrannical, venal magistrate had too good reason to dread the enmity of the people over whom he was placed as a governor, and hoped by such weak concessions to prevent complaints being lodged against him at Rome. The procurator, after hearing publicly the accusation and the prisoner's defence, as he could not possibly gratify the powerful Jewish party by condemning him, endeavoured to conciliate them by remanding the prisoner until such time when he should obtain further details respecting the case. Felix was by no means ignorant of the Nazarene's story. During the years he had held office in Judæa and Samaria, he must have had frequent opportunities of becoming acquainted with many of the tenets of the rapidly growing brotherhood, and must, too, have seen sufficient of their lives to convince himself that the peace of the Empire was not likely to be endangered by any plots they would devise. At Cæsarea, his present residence, under his very eyes, lived one of the oldest and most venerated Nazarene leaders Philip the deacon and evangelist. Round this eminent and devoted man, in the last quarter of a century, doubtless had gathered a large and influential Christian community, which included such men even as the Roman centurion Cornelius. From his Jewish wife, the Princess Brasilia, and her followers and friends, the procurator could hardly fail to have heard frequently of the Christian or Nazarene community growing up in the midst of the ‘chosen people.' He therefore may well be said to possess ‘a more perfect knowledge of that way' than men like the advocate Tertullus supposed. Here, as in chap. Acts 9:2; Acts 19:9; Acts 19:23; Acts 22:4, occurs the famous term which, in the early days of the faith, was evidently used familiarly as a synonym for the disciples of Christ ‘the way.' We have discussed the expression, and suggested how it probably first originated in the words of the Master, when He spoke of Himself as the ‘Way,' as He was also ‘the Truth and the Life;' while in those first struggling years the term ‘Christian' was obviously refused to the brotherhood of the Lord Jesus by the unbelieving Jews, and the title ‘Nazarene' was scornfully used by them as a name of reproach. The ‘way,' that ‘ way,' was not unlikely a common designation among themselves and the Jews, as implying on the one hand no doctrinal assertions respecting Messiah, or on the other hand as conveying no reproach. Of Lysias the chief captain, and his coming down, we hear nothing further. It was evidently a courteous meaningless expression of Felix, and nothing more. He had heard the story from both sides, and was well acquainted with the so-called Nazarene sect, and required no further information of Paul's innocence of the charge alleged; he was evidently fully convinced, but it suited his purposes to detain him in captivity.