CHAPTER 11
Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.
Acts 16:14 nkjv
Lydia is best remembered as the original convert for the gospel in Europe. She was the first person on record ever to respond to the message of Christ during the apostle Paul’s original missionary journey into Europe. Her conversion marked the earliest foothold of the church on a continent that ultimately became the hub of the gospel’s witness worldwide. (Europe has only relinquished that distinction to North America in the past hundred years or so.)
Ironically, however, Lydia herself was not European. Her name was also the name of a large Asian province, which was probably the region of her birth. The capital city of Lydia was Sardis. That territory’s last and best-known ruler was Croesus, who ruled in the sixth century bc and whose very name is synonymous with wealth. (He was defeated by Cyrus, ruler of Medo-Persia in Ezra’s time. Cyrus used the captured wealth of Croesus to help him conquer most of the known world.) In Roman times, the once-great land of Lydia was merely one of the provinces of Asia Minor. But by the end of the apostolic age, the province of Lydia was also a thriving center of Christianity. Sardis (still the region’s capital city in the apostle John’s time) was home to one of the seven churches in the book of Revelation (3:1–6).
Lydia’s actual hometown was the city of Thyatira. Thyatira, in the province of Lydia, was home to one of the seven churches of Revelation (2:18–29). Significantly, Thyatira was located in the very region of Asia Minor where Luke tells us Paul, Silas, and Timothy “were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word” (Acts 16:6 nkjv).
Shortly after all doors were closed to Paul for any further church-planting in Asia Minor, God sovereignly led the missionary party into Europe by means of a dream in which a Macedonian man “stood and pleaded with [Paul], saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’ ” (v. 9 nkjv). Macedonia in those days was the name of a Roman province that covered much of the upper peninsula of Greece, extending from the Adriatic to the Aegean. The area where Paul ministered lies in modern-day Greece. (Modern Macedonia is a considerably smaller region, distinct from Greece.) “Immediately,” Luke says, “we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them” (v. 10 nkjv).
The ironies are many. Instead of reaching Lydia in the region she regarded as home, the gospel pursued her to Europe, where she was engaged in business. Although Paul saw a Macedonian man in his vision, an Asian woman became the first convert on record in Europe.
Lydia was a remarkable woman who appeared suddenly and unexpectedly in the biblical narrative, reminding us that while God’s sovereign purposes usually remain hidden from our eyes, He is always at work in secret and surprising ways to call out a people for His name.
HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO LYDIA
Lydia’s story is brief but compelling. It is told in just a few verses near the start of Luke’s narrative about the apostle Paul’s second missionary journey. This was an extended missionary trip whose description spans Acts 15:36–18:22. Paul’s main companions on that long journey were Silas and Timothy. Luke apparently joined them just before they crossed the narrow strait from Troas (in Asia Minor) into Macedonia (entering Europe). Luke’s enlistment in the missionary team was signaled by an abrupt change to second-person pronouns, starting in Acts 16:10 (nkjv) (“immediately we sought to go to Macedonia”). From that point on, Luke wrote as an eyewitness. It was at that very point Lydia’s story came into play.
The sovereign hand of God’s providential guidance was evident to Paul’s entire group. Luke didn’t explain all the circumstances, but by some means they had been forbidden by the Spirit of God to journey into the heart of Asia Minor. Every other door of ministry in Asia was also closed to them (16:6–8). That’s when Paul received a revelation calling him across to the European continent. God had made it perfectly clear to all that there was just one way ahead—Macedonia. They wasted no time crossing to the Greek mainland.
Luke gives a detailed account of the route they took to Macedonia: “Sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace [an island in the Aegean, where they harbored overnight], and the next day came to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days” (16:11–12 nkjv). The short two- or three-day journey was mostly by sea. The route from Troas to Neapolis covered about 140 nautical miles. Neapolis was the port city adjacent to Philippi, which lay some ten miles farther inland.
Philippi took its name from Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. It was the eastern terminus of a famous Roman road known as the Egnatian Way. Thessalonica, where Paul would later found a famous church, lay another 150 miles west, at the other end of the Egnatian Way.
In Paul’s day, Philippi was a thriving, busy community at the crossroads of two trade routes (one by land via the highway from Thessalonica; the other by sea, via the port at nearby Neapolis). Luke describes Philippi as “a colony” (Acts 16:12 nkjv), which means it was a colony of Rome, with a Roman government and a large population of Roman citizens. History records that Philippi had become a Roman colony in 31 bc. That meant the city had its own local government accountable directly to Rome, completely independent of the provincial Macedonian government. Its citizens were also exempt from Macedonian taxes. So this was a prosperous and flourishing city, bustling with trade and commerce from all over the world. It was a strategic place for introducing the gospel to Europe.
Paul and company spent “some days” in Philippi, apparently waiting for the Sabbath. Paul’s normal evangelistic strategy was to take the gospel first to the local synagogue, because if he went to the Gentiles first, the Jews would never listen to anything he had to say. Philippi, however, was a thoroughly Gentile town with no synagogue.
There were a few Jews in Philippi, but very few—not even enough to support a synagogue. In order to start a synagogue in any community, Jewish custom required a quorum (known as a minyan) of at least ten Jewish men (any adult males beyond the age of Bar Mitzvah would qualify). The number was supposedly derived from the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which God told Abraham He would spare those cities for the sake of ten righteous men (Gen. 18:32–33). But the minyan rule was a classic example of rabbinical invention. Biblical law made no such restriction.
According to the tradition, in communities without synagogues, Jewish women could pray together in groups if they liked, but men had to form a legitimate minyan before they could partake in any kind of formal, public, communal worship—including prayer, the reading of the Torah, or the giving of public blessings.
Since Philippi’s Jewish community was apparently not large enough to form a legitimate minyan, Paul and his group learned the place where Jewish women gathered to pray on the Sabbath, and they went there instead. Luke writes, “On the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there” (Acts 16:13 nkjv). The river was a small stream known as the Gangitis, just west of the town. Apparently, the small group of women who gathered there constituted the only public gathering of Jews anywhere in Philippi on a typical Sabbath day. In keeping with his principle of bringing the gospel “[to] the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16 nkjv), Paul went to the riverside to preach.
Ironically, the one woman who responded most eagerly was not Jewish at all. Lydia was a worshiper of yhwh, at least externally. But she was a Gentile, an active seeker of the true God who had not even yet become a formal Jewish proselyte. Luke described his first meeting with Lydia this way: “A certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God” (Acts 16:14 nkjv).
She was, in effect, a businesswoman. She sold purple dye and fancy purple cloth, manufactured by a famous guild in her hometown of Thyatira. (Archaeologists have uncovered several Roman inscriptions dating from the first century and referring to the guild of dyers in Thyatira.) The rare and expensive dye (actually more crimson than purple) was made from a spiny-shelled mollusk known as the murex. The process had been invented in ancient Tyre, and the dye was (and is still) known as Tyrian dye. Manufacturers in Thyatira had perfected a better method of obtaining the dye from the mollusks. They also had developed a less expensive dye of similar color from the root of the madder plant. This was a popular alternative to the more costly color, especially among working-class people. But the more expensive Tyrian dye was the basis for royal purple, and that substance was one of the most precious of all commodities in the ancient world. So Lydia must have been a woman of some means. The mention of a household in Acts 16:15 would indicate that she maintained a home in Philippi, most likely, with household servants. All of this confirms that she was a wealthy woman.
HOW THE GOSPEL CAPTURED LYDIA’S HEART
The manner of Lydia’s conversion is a fine illustration of how God always redeems lost souls. From our human perspective, we may think we are seeking Him, that trusting Christ is merely a “decision” that lies within the power of our own will to choose, or that we are sovereign over our own hearts and affections. In reality, wherever you see a soul like Lydia’s truly seeking God, you can be certain God is drawing her. Whenever someone trusts Christ, it is God who opens the heart to believe. If God Himself did not draw us to Christ, we would never come at all. Jesus was quite clear about this: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44 nkjv). “No one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father” (v. 65 nkjv).
The fallen human heart is in absolute bondage to sin. Every sinner is just as helpless as Mary Magdalene was under the possession of those seven demons. Romans 8:7–8 says, “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (nkjv). We are powerless to change our own hearts or turn from evil in order to do good: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil?” (Jer. 13:23 nkjv). The love of evil is part of our fallen nature, and it is the very thing that makes it impossible for us to choose good over evil. Our wills are bent in accordance with what we love. We are in bondage to our own corruption. Scripture portrays the condition of every fallen sinner as a state of hopeless enslavement to sin.
Actually, it’s even worse than that. It is a kind of death—an utter spiritual barrenness that leaves us totally at the mercy of the sinful lusts of our own flesh (Eph. 2:1–3). We are helpless to change our own hearts for the better.
Acts 16:14 describes Lydia as a woman “who worshiped God” (nkjv). Intellectually, at least, she already knew that yhwh was the one true God. She apparently met regularly with the Jewish women who gathered to pray on the Sabbath, but she had not yet become a convert to Judaism.
Luke recorded that Lydia “heard us” (Acts 16:14 nkjv). He used a Greek word that meant she was listening intently. She did not merely absorb the sound, but she was carefully attentive to the meaning of the words. She was not like Paul’s companions on the road to Damascus, who heard the noise of a voice (Acts 9:7) but didn’t understand the meaning of it (22:9). She listened with rapt attention and understanding as Paul and his companions explained the gospel message.
Her heart was truly open. She was a genuine seeker of God. But notice Luke’s whole point: it was not that Lydia opened her own heart and ears to the truth. Yes, she was seeking, but even that was because God was drawing her. She was listening, but it was God who gave her ears to hear. She had an open heart, but it was God who opened her heart. Luke expressly affirms the sovereignty of God in Lydia’s salvation: “The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul” (16:14 nkjv).
A lot of people struggle to come to grips with this truth. It is a difficult idea, but I am very glad for the truth of it. If it were not for God’s sovereign work drawing and opening the hearts of sinners to believe, no one would ever be saved. This is the very thing Paul has in mind in Ephesians 2, after stressing the utter spiritual deadness of sinners, when he says salvation—all of it—is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8–9).
Did you realize that even faith is God’s gift to the believer? We don’t reach down into our own hearts and summon faith from within by sheer willpower. God is the one who opens our hearts to believe. Repentance is something He graciously bestows (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25).
I think all Christians have some intuitive understanding of this truth. That is why we pray for the salvation of our loved ones. (If salvation were solely dependent on own free-will choice, what would be the point of praying to God about it?) We also know in our hearts that we cannot boast of being wiser or more learned than our neighbors who still do not believe. We know in our hearts that our salvation is wholly and completely the work of God’s grace, and not in any sense our own doing. All believers, like Lydia, must confess that it was God who first opened our hearts to believe.
The language is significant. A lot of people imagine that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty has Him somehow forcing people against their wills to believe. Theologians sometimes use the expression “irresistible grace” when they describe the way God brings sinners into the kingdom. Don’t imagine for a moment that there is any kind of violent force or coercion involved when God draws people to Christ. Grace doesn’t push sinners against their wills toward Christ; it draws them willingly to Him—by first opening their hearts. It enables them to see their sin for what it is and empowers them to despise what they formerly loved. It also equips them to see Christ for who He truly is. Someone whose heart has been opened like that will inevitably find Christ Himself irresistible. That is precisely the meaning of the expression “irresistible grace.” That is how God draws sinners to Himself. Luke’s description of Lydia’s conversion captures it beautifully. The Lord simply opened her heart to believe—and she did.
God’s sovereign hand is seen clearly in every aspect of Luke’s account. The Lord clearly orchestrated the circumstances that brought Paul to Macedonia. It was a similar providence that brought Lydia there and drew her to the riverside on a Sabbath morning with a seeking heart. It was the Spirit of God who sovereignly opened her heart, gave her spiritual ears to hear, and gave her spiritual eyes to see the irresistible appeal of Christ.
For her part, she responded instantly. God’s sovereignty does not leave the sinner out of the process. Lydia heard and heeded. She willingly embraced the truth of the gospel and became a believer that very morning. She became a participant in the fulfillment of the promise made long before to Eve. The seed of the woman crushed the serpent’s head for her.
HOW THE GOSPEL TRANSFORMED LYDIA’S LIFE
Lydia’s faith immediately was evident in her actions. Almost incidentally, Luke said, “And when she and her household were baptized …” (Acts 16:15 nkjv). Remember, the meeting took place next to a river. apparently, Lydia, like the Ethiopian eunuch, needed little encouragement to take that first step of obedience to Christ. She was baptized then and there.
Notice also that Scripture mentioned her “household.” This could describe her actual family, but nothing in the context indicated she was married. It would have been highly unusual in that culture for a married woman with family responsibilities to be involved in an import-export business requiring her to travel from continent to continent. Besides, she was clearly the head of her household. It was, after all, “her” household, and verse 40 (nkjv) speaks of “the house of Lydia,” signifying that she was the owner of the building.
Lydia may have been a widow. Her household most likely included servants. She may also have had grown children who lived and traveled with her. But whoever was included in the household, they all came to faith and were baptized right along with Lydia. She was already leading others to Christ. And God was graciously opening their hearts too.
Lydia was also quick to show hospitality to the missionaries. According to Luke, she “begged” them to be her guests: “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay” (Acts 16:15 nkjv). Luke added (with characteristic understatement), “So she persuaded us” (v. 15 nkjv).
Lydia’s hospitality to these strangers who had come in the name of the Lord was commendable. Again, her eagerness to host them reminds us that she was a woman of means. We know for sure that the group included Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke. In all likelihood there were others. This may have been a large team. It would be no easy task, even today, to host so many strangers. Since they had no plans for where to go next (they were there, after all, to plant a church), she was offering to keep them indefinitely.
Moreover, the real cost to Lydia was potentially much higher than the monetary value of room and board for a group of missionaries. Remember that Philippi was where Paul and Silas were beaten badly, thrown in jail, and clamped in stocks. They were ultimately freed by a miraculous earthquake, and the jailer and all his household became Christians in the process. But if preaching the gospel was deemed a jailable offense, Lydia was exposing herself to possible trouble—a loss of business, bad will in the community, and even a prison sentence for herself—by housing these strangers and thus giving them a base from which to evangelize.
Her wonderful act of hospitality nevertheless opened the way for the church to penetrate Europe. Paul and the missionaries apparently stayed with Lydia for a long time. Verse 18 describes a demon-possessed woman who harassed them “for many days” (nkjv, emphasis added), until Paul, “greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And he came out that very hour.”
The possessed woman was a slave whose owners had profited greatly from her fortune-telling abilities (v. 16). After the demon left her, she could no longer do whatever trick gave her credibility as a seer. The girl’s owners therefore drummed up the public opposition that soon landed Paul and Silas in jail.
After the conversion of the jailer, when Paul and Silas were finally freed, Luke said, “They went out of the prison and entered the house of Lydia; and when they had seen the brethren, they encouraged them and departed” (Acts 16:40 nkjv).
That indicates that they had been in Philippi long enough to found a fledgling church. Apparently, a number of people had responded to the gospel. Naturally, their first meeting place was Lydia’s home. By opening her home to the apostle Paul, Lydia had the honor of hosting in her own living room the earliest meetings of the first church ever established in Europe! She gained that honor for herself by showing such warm hospitality to this team of missionaries whom she barely knew. She epitomized the kind of hospitality Scripture demands of all Christians.
Lydia’s hospitality was as remarkable as her faith. Because of her generosity to Paul and his missionary team, the gospel obtained a solid foothold in Philippi. A few short years later, Paul penned the epistle that bears the name of that church. It is obvious from the tone of his epistle that opposition to the gospel was still strong in Philippi. But the gospel was more powerful yet, and from Philippi the testimony of Christ sounded out into all of Europe. It continues to spread to the uttermost parts of the earth, even today.
Lydia’s reward in heaven will surely be great. She was a truly extraordinary woman. Like all the women in our study, everything that made her exceptional was a result of God’s work in her heart. Scripture is explicit about that, especially in Lydia’s case—but it is true of every woman we have studied.
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MacArthur, J. (2005). Twelve extraordinary women : How God shaped women of the Bible and what He wants to do with you (2). Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books.
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