How do governments fit with Christ’s authority? (Acts 25:10)

Why would Paul say this? “I am standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried.” (Acts 25:10)

Doesn’t Paul believe Jesus is the ruler who ultimately sets all things right? And if he had to choose between Jerusalem and Rome, why choose the rulers who oppressed God’s nation rather than the nation called to represent God’s authority?

Paul’s statement cuts across how many today think about Israel, empire, and the kingship of the Christ.

Context

When Paul arrived back in Jerusalem, some treated him as undermining the Jewish Law: While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar (21:31). The Roman commander saved Paul, just as the Babylonian commander had saved Jeremiah (Jeremiah 40:1-4). He was transferred to Caesarea for trial before the Roman procurator.

Acts 25:2-11 (NIV)
² The chief priests and the Jewish leaders … ³ requested Festus, as a favour to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. …
⁹ Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favour, said to Paul, “Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?”
¹⁰ Paul answered: “I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried. … ¹¹ If the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”

Paul’s statement doesn’t work if you believe that Israel was the source of God’s justice for the world. It also doesn’t work if you believe that Jesus is Lord so Caesar is not.

What are we to make of Paul’s beliefs? Does he think Caesar’s court is valid? Why prefer Rome’s authority to Jerusalem’s? And what about Jesus’ authority?

Is Caesar’s court valid?

Israel’s story has a wider frame. It begins with the claim that God rules all people (Genesis 1–11). When violence corrupted God’s world, God re-founded it in Noah (Genesis 6–9). That’s when God authorized the community to take the life of a killer (Genesis 9:5-6). This delegated authority permitted the rise of nations (Genesis 10), with the kingdoms that eventually overpowered Israel at the centre of this account (10:10-11).

So, while the authority of the nations rose out of rebellion against God and continues to operate against God’s decrees, the authority is God-given. The prophets can say that God raises up Babylon (Habakkuk 1:6) and gives dominion to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:37).

This is the view Paul holds about Caesar:

Romans 13:1, 4 (NIV)
¹ There is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. …
⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Bearing the sword as punishment for the wrongdoer begins with Genesis 9, and continues through Israel’s story. Sometimes, when Israel is the wrongdoer, the nations bear the sword on God’s behalf (e.g. Ezekiel 21:1-18; 30:25; 32:36).

Caesar’s authority was therefore God-given, even if God’s nation was only being ruled by Rome because it refused to follow its true Lord. Like Jesus said to Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11).

So yes: Caesar’s authority was valid, divinely appointed in Paul’s time.

That still leaves the question of why Paul preferred Rome’s authority to Jerusalem’s.

Why prefer Rome’s authority to Jerusalem’s?

The temple represented God’s authority, but Paul didn’t trust them. He called them a whitewashed wall (Acts 23:3). That was Ezekiel’s term for the Jerusalem leaders who just painted over the inner rot (Ezekiel 13:14). Ezekiel believed God had already moved out of the temple and it was going to fall (Ezekiel 8–12).

As in Jeremiah’s time, Jesus believed the temple had ceased being a house for God and become a den of robbers (Luke 19:46; Jeremiah 7:11). Because the temple had rejected the authority of God’s Christ (Luke 20), it would fall (Luke 21:5-6).

In his past life, Paul had aligned himself with the temple:

Acts 22:2-5 (NIV)
⁴ “I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, ⁵ as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.”

That was the journey when Paul realized the temple was misrepresenting God’s authority. By aligning with the temple, Paul perpetuated the persecution of the king (Acts 22:6-8). He stopped serving the temple, and became an agent of King Jesus to the nations (22:17-21).

It’s hardly surprising that Paul mistrusts the Jerusalem authorities who handed over the King of the Jews to their enemies to be crucified. How would they treat an ambassador of King Jesus? More than forty people had informed the Jerusalem leaders, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat or drink anything until we have killed Paul” (22:14).

So, it’s true: Paul was more likely to get justice from Rome than from Jerusalem.

In the seventh century BC, King Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end (2 Kings 21:16). God decreed that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon (2 Kings 21:10-15). Jerusalem had not had a God-anointed king since. When he came, the temple shed his blood. God decreed that Jerusalem would fall again, and fall it did within a decade of Paul declaring he’d prefer to seek justice from Rome than Jerusalem.

What about Jesus’ authority?

But surely calling on the name of Caesar for justice is incongruent with Paul’s gospel?

The gospel the apostles proclaimed was that God’s anointed (his Christ) is our ruler (our Lord), because God raised him from the dead when those in power executed him: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). They assert, “There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we be rescued.” (4:12).

Samaria had not been God’s kingdom for 800 years when Philip gave them the gospel of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus the Christ (8:12).

An officer of the Italian Regiment learned that his boss was not the Lord who unites all people under his empire, for the gospel makes peace through Jesus the Christ who is Lord of all (10:36).

When King Herod accepted worship as a god, he was revealed to be a mere mortal. The worms began eating his decaying body while he was still alive (12:23). The Book of Acts does not allow us to pigeonhole Jesus’ authority to the spiritual realm, leaving others in charge of the physical realm.

That was Paul’s constant clash with existing powers wherever he proclaimed the authority of Jesus’ name. In Philippi, he was imprisoned for advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice (16:21). In Thessalonica, he was accused of defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus (17:7). In Athens, he proclaimed Jesus as the judge appointed by God to bring justice to the world (17:31).

The kingdom of God was Paul’s message (14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). That the nations participate in the reign of God’s Messiah was Paul’s gospel. More accurately, the kingship of the Christ was God’s gospel — a proclamation God made when he raised his Son out of death and placed him in power, with Paul called to echo this proclamation to the nations (Romans 1:1-5).

The resurrected (Acts 1:2), ascended (1:9), enthroned (7:55) King Jesus appointed Paul to “proclaim my name to the nations and their kings” as well as to the nation that had already been God’s kingdom (9:15). The God-anointed king sent Paul to the nations (22:21), and explicitly to Rome (23:11).

Acts concludes with Paul in Rome, proclaiming the kingdom of God. In other words, Paul was teaching about the Lord who rules everything, namely Jesus the Christ. Astoundingly, he was doing this right under Caesar’s nose: with all boldness and without hindrance (28:31), for Caesar did not yet recognize the implications of Christ’s rule.

Living in the now and not yet

One day, all authority will be in the hands of King Jesus. Every knee will bow to his regency as the anointed king who restores heaven’s reign to earth. Every tongue will give allegiance to the ruler who unites the world under heaven’s leadership. When there’s no longer any enemy opposing him, he will undo the power of death itself, handing the kingdom over to his Father so that God is all in all. That’s the end game from Paul’s gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-28).

In the present, we proclaim the good news that God’s Christ as our Lord as we embody communal life under his leadership, living as the present expression of the kingdom of the king. We do this in the face of rulers who care only about their own power. It’s why Paul suffered. It’s why he said, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

God’s people suffered in the time of the judges, in the time of the kings of Israel and Judah, and in exile under foreign rulers. That’s why the Servant of the Lord shouldered the sufferings of his people. He was handed over by the rulers of God’s people, and crucified by their enemies. He was raised on the third day by the Spirit who appointed him as the reigning Son of God (Son of God in power). Having God’s Christ as our Lord is the good news God had promised, our ultimate liberation from every oppressive force, every painful shard of evil, every form of oppressive control.

As we anticipate our full release in Christ, we’re still living in a world where God has authorized human government in order to limit evil, the world of Genesis 9 and Romans 13, the world where Pilate had the authority to authorize Jesus’ execution, the world where Felix had the power to hold Paul in prison and the Jerusalem leaders were complicit in a plot to kill Paul.

Tragically, Paul believed he was more likely to get justice from Rome than Jerusalem. He was probably right. Caesar is not the hope of the world. He’s motivated by whatever gives him power. We’re talking about Nero. But governments still exist by God’s decree to limit violence, even though we know the world can only be saved by God’s Christ.

But there’s one final plot twist. Paul recognizes Rome’s authority, and probably expects Jerusalem to fall. But what he really wants is go to Rome to proclaim the kingship of God’s Christ, the kingdom of God arriving in the ruler Jesus the Christ (the Lord Jesus Christ). That’s Paul’s ultimate hope for the world (Acts 28:31).

What others are saying

Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 991–992:

Paul equates a transfer to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin with a death sentence. He insists that since none of their charges against him has been proven, no official can hand him over as a favor to the Jewish authorities. … While Festus, eager to grant the Jews a favor, conveniently “forgets” the principles of Roman law as they pertain to a Roman citizen, Paul asserts the validity of Roman law. Since Paul cannot be certain that Festus will follow Roman law, given his desire to please the Jewish authorities, he appeals to the emperor in Rome. …

The emperor in question was Nero, whose first five years in office after acceding to imperial rule in AD 54 were remembered with more fondness than his later years of megalomania.

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 13-28 (London: SPCK, 2008), 198:

Festus tries one last time to do something which would buy him a lot of political credit with the Jewish authorities … ‘Would you be willing to go up to Jerusalem and be tried there before me?’ …

Paul knows his rights. He is standing at Caesar’s tribunal, before Caesar’s delegated officer, and this is where as a citizen of Caesar’s empire he ought to be tried. Once again he protests his innocence; he is not afraid to die if he deserves to, but he knows very well that going up to Jerusalem would be tantamount to Festus ‘handing him over’ to the Jewish officials (verse 11), with only one possible result. He insists not only on justice, but on properly constituted officials doing their properly authorized job, just as he insisted on getting his public apology from the magistrates at Philippi. And so, with all other cards in his hand exhausted, he finally plays his ace of trumps. ‘I appeal to Caesar.’

Related posts

• Why doesn’t the Bible condemn bad rulers? (Eph 6:12)
• Does God authorize governments? (Romans 13:1-7)
• Shaking the powers (Matthew 24:29)
• Jesus and the Powers (Wright and Bird)
• Daniel: Who’s running the world? (podcast)