In Acts 25, Festus is relating his experience with Paul and the Jewish leaders to his good buddy King Agrippa, and he’s telling the king how surprised he was at the nature of the charges thrown at Paul. He was expecting something serious – maybe he was the leader of a rebel group, or maybe he had tried to assassinate someone. All he heard, though, were some “points of dispute” concerning their religion, and some stuff “about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive.”

In each person’s frame of reference, Jesus occupied a different role. To Festus, Jesus was an unknown, inconsequential figure who had something to do with the situation he was called upon to judge, but had nothing to do with him. To the Jewish leaders, Jesus was a source of controversy, threatening their religion and way of life. To them, Jesus was reason enough to kill. To Paul, Jesus was everything – the One who had changed his life, the One who had appeared to him and given him a mission, the One whom he wanted to know more than anything.

How does Jesus appear today? I’d love to hear from you on this one, because I don’t rub shoulders with many people whose viewpoint of Jesus is different than mine.

For further discussion: How do these different viewpoints affect how we live and talk and interact? Check out I Peter 3:13-17 . . . I think it’s applicable to this discussion.