by Randy Singer
He finished and looked up at Tigellinus.
“Do the followers of the Nazarene in Ephesus claim that the name of Jesus, also known as the Christ, is above the name of Caesar?”
Alexander’s eyes flitted around. He was tense as a caged bird. “Yes, they do.”
“And where did they get that idea?”
“From that letter.”
Nero watched dispassionately, but I knew he couldn’t allow such doctrines to go unpunished.
When Alexander finished testifying, Nero asked me if I had any questions.
“No, Your Excellency.” What was the point in drawing more attention to what Paul had written?
The next witness was more of the same. Demas meekly joined Paul in the center of the floor below Nero’s judgment seat. Under questioning from Tigellinus, he testified that he had once been a member of the Way and a disciple of Jesus in Rome. Another scroll was unrolled. This one was a letter to the believers in Rome, written by Paul before his recent imprisonment. It took Tigellinus a few minutes to find the passage for Demas to read, but when he did, the words were deadly.
“‘If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,’” Demas read. “‘For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.’”
Everyone in the judgment hall knew the import of the words, but Tigellinus drove them home anyway.
“Are you aware of the custom of Roman generals when they conquer a new province?” he asked Demas.
“Yes, I have heard the stories.”
“And what is it that they make the subjects say as a sign of their subjugation to Rome?”
“That Caesar is lord.”
“Have you ever heard the defendant teach the followers of the Way?”
“A few times at his house.”
“During those times of teaching, have you ever heard him acknowledge that Caesar is lord?”
“No. He taught us that Jesus is Lord.”
“And what about Caesar?”
Demas looked down and hesitated.
“What about Caesar?”
“We were taught that one day, at the name of Jesus, every knee in heaven and on earth would bow and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. That would include Caesar.”
Nero’s lips were tightly pressed, his eyes narrow. “Is this true?” he asked Paul.
“Perhaps my words are being taken a bit out of context,” Paul replied quickly. “God is merciful and long-suffering. He is rich in grace and anxious to forgive. But his grace is manifested through his Son, Jesus. And yes, that is the only name under heaven through which salvation is possible.”
Nero snorted. “I’ve heard enough evidence,” he said, standing. His eyes blazed. “I will return with my ruling.”
With that, he left in a flurry. His assessores and clerks trailed in his wake.
I stepped forward and stood next to my client.
“I have preached the gospel to Nero himself,” Paul said, his voice filled with melancholy. “It’s in God’s hands now.”
“The emperor has no power except what is given him from above,” I said.
Paul looked sideways at me—the knowing look of a proud mentor. “The words of Jesus,” he said.
I nodded. “It’s what he said to Pilate in the Praetorium.”
“Do you believe it?”
“How could I not? He came back three days later, didn’t he?”
Paul grinned. “That’s what I’ve heard,” he said.
Flavia stepped outside the judgment hall and looked up. Not a hint of blue sky anywhere. The menacing clouds on the horizon were the darkest of all, and the wind was blowing them directly over Rome.
There would be no sun today. No shadows. No chance that a Vestal Virgin could cross paths with a guilty man and set him free.
It didn’t seem like Paul cared. She had heard it in his voice. His prayer that morning had been that God would give him the courage to speak the gospel boldly. His prayer had certainly been answered.
Now, if God would only answer hers.
CHAPTER 85
Nero returned in a foul mood. His jaw was firmly set as he took his seat and the clerk called the session back to order. His assessores shuffled into their places behind him, their eyes darting around the judgment hall. I wondered what they had talked about during the break.
I hoped that I would get a chance to give a closing argument before he ruled. I knew that I at least had to try.
“Before the court pronounces judgment, I believe I’m entitled to provide Your Excellency with a closing argument.”
Nero scowled at me. “The defendant seemed quite capable of speaking for himself.”
“Still, if Caesar pleases, the defendant is not a trained advocate. He is not versed in the intricacies of Roman law that might determine whether he lives or dies.”
“Perhaps he should have thought of that before he spoke.”
“With respect, Caesar, you asked him questions. It is traditional in cases of this nature—”
“Enough!” Nero barked.
“But, Caesar, there are procedures. Time-honored rights—”
“I said enough!” Nero stood and glowered at me. His guards took a few steps forward. I felt my face flush with anger.
“My assessores have informed me of your history of advocacy,” Nero said, practically spitting the words out. “You defended Apronius when he heaped vile insults on Tiberius. ‘Mere words,’ you called them. Later, the body of Caligula was not even cold when you mounted the Rostra and rallied the citizens against the principate. You said that emperors turn Romans into slaves.”
Nero’s face was tight with rage, the veins in his neck bulging. I stared back at him, unapologetic.
His anger simmered for a moment before he spoke again. “Perhaps you should be the one on trial rather than some deluded Jewish madman with his strange new superstition.”
“I have a job to do as an advocate,” I said. My voice was steady though my throat was tight, my mouth suddenly dry. “Our Roman system of justice requires that I do it well.”
This seemed to appease Nero, if only a little. He relaxed and sat back down, his fierce stare still fixed on me. In that moment he seemed to remember that he was there as a judge, not my adversary.
He took a sip of wine and surveyed the judgment hall, taking in the ostentatious beauty that reflected his unlimited power. There were pearls from Persia lining the walls. Colored marble from Egypt on the floor. Intricately carved columns from Corinth. His own gold statue looming over the defendant. Who could stand up to his power?
He looked at Paul with an expression that worried me. A glint of irony in the small blue eyes. The faintest hint of a smile. A wave of premonition swept over me. Nero was up to something that couldn’t possibly be good.
“You claim to believe in a resurrection,” he said. His voice was less acerbic and more playful now. “I should give you a chance to prove it at noon.”
Paul, for once, had the good sense not to respond.
“Tigellinus has proven his case that you are a danger to Rome. You call on Rome’s emperor to repent. You say there is a God greater than the Roman gods. You swear allegiance to another king.
“But maybe Festus had it right. Maybe you are simply out of your mind. Visions of a dead man. Speaking to Caesar as though I were a common slave. You seem to believe that with just a few sentences you can convince me to throw away the power of Rome and become a convert to a religion founded by a Jewish rabbi. What sane man has such thoughts?”
For a moment, the smallest flicker of hope kindled inside me. Was he going to call Paul a madman, punish him for insanity, and set him free? Yet even as Caesar took this unexpected path, my instincts were telling me something more insidious was at play. Nero, the great actor, was playing a part. This trial was a scene in a larger play. But I had no idea what that larger pla
y was about. And why did it matter as long as Paul was ultimately set free?
“You have spoken of a God who shows great mercy and grace,” Nero said. He rose and stood to his full height, chest out, chin up, a specimen for the world to admire. “Today you will know that Caesar is the greatest god of all. I find you guilty of sedition. I find you deserving of death. But by the grace and mercy of Caesar, you shall be released.”
The ruling stunned the entire judgment hall and took a moment to sink in. A quick glance at my client told me that Paul was troubled by it and wanted to speak. I placed my left hand on his arm to keep him from doing so.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” I said.
“Now get out of my sight before I change my mind,” Nero said.
Against my strong advice, Paul proceeded directly to the Forum and preached like he had never preached before. He didn’t say a word about the trial, but he still drew quite a crowd. He talked about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. He told the well-worn story of his own conversion on the road to Damascus. If anybody deserved to be punished, Paul said, it was him, the greatest of all sinners. But he had found forgiveness and so could everyone else.
At noon, he was shoved aside by the Roman soldiers, who dragged the condemned prisoners to the Gemonian Stairs for their ceremonial beheadings. I thought this might sober Paul, but it only seemed to invigorate him. He directed his preaching at the prisoners and spoke with a greater sense of urgency. The condemned men just stared at him as if he were some kind of lunatic.
When the executions were over, Paul invited everyone to the Tiber for baptisms. I followed in his wake along with Flavia and Mansuetus. At the dawn of this day, being baptized was the furthest thing from my mind. I was an advocate, not a disciple. But so many things had changed in the last few hours.
Sometime during the trial, though I couldn’t say precisely when, the jumbled pieces of my life all came together. I suppose they were there all along, these discrete blocks of evidence from an Advocate far greater than I, building a case I could no longer ignore.
My face-to-face meeting with the Nazarene. His sacrifice. The anguished protest of nature at his death. The growing proof of his resurrection. The supernatural power of his followers.
Paul had made the choice magnificently stark. Who was Lord—Nero or the man called Christ? Whose kingdom would prevail?
As Romans, we were fascinated with death, inventing the cross as the ultimate tool of pain and humiliation. I had hung there once, feeling the full force of the shame.
But now, in this new movement, the cross was an instrument of power. Humiliation became strength. The blood that flowed from the Nazarene created a river of forgiveness and freedom and hope. Death was no longer something to be feared but a passageway to new life.
“What is truth?” Pilate had asked.
His wife, Procula, had discovered the answer. So had my son, Mansuetus, and eventually even Flavia, when the healing power of Jesus had brought a Virgin back from the brink of death.
It was only fitting that I would find the answer in the middle of a trial, through the brave words of a client who cared more about truth than freedom, more about the souls of kings than the chains that bound him.
For whatever reason, in spite of Paul’s blunt words about Caesar’s need for repentance, the emperor had sided with the apostle. The verdict was wholly unexpected and nothing short of a miracle.
Paul was guilty, yet still he was free.
And now, as I followed him to the banks of the Tiber River, for the first time in my life, so was I.
CHAPTER 86
That day, only a few hundred yards from where I had first proposed to Flavia, I walked down the muddy banks of the river, holding her hand. Mansuetus was on Flavia’s other side. We had watched Paul baptize more than forty new believers, men and women of every stripe. Each one of them had come out of the water smiling and looking to heaven. They all embraced Paul when they were done.
Paul had intentionally saved us for last. The others watched as one of Rome’s storied advocates and a former priestess from the temple of Vesta, along with their son, entered the waters to symbolize our commitment to our new faith. About halfway to Paul, I stepped on an algae-covered rock and slipped, pulling Flavia down with me. We laughed, and the believers cheered. Mansuetus just shook his head.
As the three of us approached Paul, he was beaming like a proud father. Mansuetus went first, which was only fitting, because he had been the first to believe. When he came out of the water, Paul threw his arms around my son and patted him on the back. I saw tears glistening in Flavia’s eyes.
“Your son is a good man,” Paul said to us.
“I know,” Flavia replied. I simply nodded, at a loss for words.
Flavia went next. She stood in front of Paul and grasped his left hand. He placed his right hand on the small of her back.
“Are you willing to die to yourself and follow Jesus of Nazareth as your Savior and Lord?”
The question was not just an academic one. Everyone knew we had escaped Caesar’s judgment hall that day by the narrowest of margins.
“I am,” Flavia said.
And with that simple declaration, Paul leaned her back under the muddy waters of the Tiber and then raised her out. Water dripped from her long dark hair, and she brushed it out of her eyes. It reminded me of the first time I had seen her, drenched in the blood of a sacrificed bull, her face glistening and beautiful and magnetic. I had loved her from that moment, but I had never loved her more than I did right now.
She walked over to me, and we embraced for a moment before I stepped forward to take my turn.
The entire experience was a blur. Paul asking me if I was ready to put my life on the line. A quick look at Flavia and Mansuetus before I went under. The breathtaking exhilaration of coming out of the water and looking up at the sky. Experiencing the pleasure of God.
By nature, I had never been an emotional man, but I suddenly wanted to shout or cry or raise my arms in celebration. I settled for a slap of the water.
When we were done, the three of us walked out of the river together, climbing up the slippery bank without saying a word. I didn’t know what Flavia and Mansuetus were thinking, but as for me, I went back to that evening I spent with Nicodemus just a few days before the troubling events in Jerusalem. At the time, the words made no sense, but I understood them perfectly now. Back then they were concepts. Today they described my feelings and my life.
“Unless a man was born of water and the Spirit, he could not enter the kingdom of God. . . . What was born of the flesh was flesh, but what was born of the Spirit was spirit.”
That day, on the banks of the Tiber, I felt the cool wind on my skin. We were all soaking wet, and there was a bite in the early spring breeze.
“How do you feel?” Flavia asked me.
I thought for a moment before answering. The guilt I had lived with for so long—guilt for my cowardice at the trial of Jesus, guilt for conspiring against Caligula and for killing Lucian, guilt for a thousand other acts of selfishness and greed and deceit—all of it was now gone.
“Forgiven,” I finally said. “Forgiven and fully alive.”
Six days after our baptisms, Paul and Luke set out for Hispania. Paul had long been determined to share the good news about Jesus with the Celts and Iberians there. It was part of his quest to take the message to the very ends of the earth. Beyond the Roman region of Hispania lay only the sea.
He promised to return, but that didn’t make his departure any easier. Mansuetus took it especially hard. He begged me and Flavia for permission to go with Paul, but we all agreed he wasn’t yet ready. Besides, Paul told him, he was needed in Rome.
I wanted to see my son complete his training in rhetoric. I had no doubt that somehow God would use him to spread faith in the Nazarene, but not in a remote province like Hispania. I had always dreamed of Mansuetus following in the footsteps of great orators like Cicero right here in Rome. Maybe he and h
is generation could usher in a return to the values of the Republic based on the principles the Nazarene had taught.
Besides, I needed Mansuetus with me. I wanted us to learn about this new faith together.
As we watched Paul and Luke walk away, I felt a mixture of bemusement and loneliness. Paul’s brisk pace, limp and all, made me smile. I imagined that the much-younger Luke would be the one suggesting that they stop for the night. We had offered to help them buy horses, but Paul told us to use the money for the needy believers. He preferred to walk.
I also felt a profound sense of loss. Paul was the unquestioned leader of the believers in our city, and I had spent most of my waking hours the past few days soaking in his wisdom. Now the man who had led me to faith and inspired me to be bold in Nero’s court was leaving. I still sensed the Spirit at work in my life and in the lives of the other believers, but that did nothing to dissipate the sadness. The apostle, the man who had performed so many miracles and endured so much suffering, was walking down the road, leaving the rest of us behind.
Dozens of us watched them leave, but Paul never turned to acknowledge us a final time. He had obviously done this before.
Last night he had met with Flavia, Mansuetus, and me privately. He had prayed for us. He had thanked me again for delivering him, as he put it, “out of the mouth of the lion.” He had encouraged us to become leaders among the believers in Rome.
And now he was fading into the distance. As he and Luke disappeared, one of the believers broke out in song. It was a song of praise, taught to us by Paul, one he said he had used in the jail at Philippi. I joined in as best I could, though the lump in my throat made it hard to participate.
