Paul and Felix

Acts 24:24-25

After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.”

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part Two)

Paul seems to have exercised . . . a kind of fearful fascination: the twisted, crooked ruler found the straight talking extraordinary and even appealing but of course frightening as the same time. If what Paul was saying was true, his own life was a tangled mess indeed. Faith in the Messiah, Jesus, would mean coming to terms with justice, self-control, and the coming judgment, and on each of those scores Felix must have realized that he was, to say the least, doing rather badly. . . .

We must never forget that Acts is the book in which Luke descries all that Jesus continued to do and to teach (1.1). This is what that continuing ministry looks like, as the living Jesus once more confronts a Roman governor and puts him straight on matters of truth, justice and the kingdom of God (John 18.33—19.12) (193).