The Scripture does not give us a lot of information about the conversion of Lydia, but what it does give us is rich in its teaching. Here was a woman who was in business and yet assembled with other women for the purpose of prayer. She was a woman given to seeking the Lord despite the fact that there was no synagogue and that no men appeared to be part of the group that met for the purpose of prayer. God sent Paul to preach the Gospel to them and while Paul was preaching the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to respond to what Paul said. It is easy to deduce that Paul was preaching Christ crucified (I Cor 1:23) and she came to Christ on hearing of the glory of God in that.
And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer; and we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled. 14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. 15 And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, some into my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us (Acts 16:13-15).
The Lord has been pleased to give us but a smattering of direct evidence about Lydia. Her name is only mentioned twice in Scripture. One was in the text above (Acts 16:4) and the other is the last verse of Acts 16: “They went out of the prison and entered the house of Lydia, and when they saw the brethren, they encouraged them and departed” (v. 40). What we are given, however, is enough to make some assessment. With what we have we can state that Lydia was a woman who was given a new heart and became a new creature in Christ Jesus. Paul baptized her and so he thought she was converted. It may seem small when Acts 16:40 states that Paul and others entered the house of Lydia, but from the context it is quite a big deal. From the context it shows that she was now a woman who was not concerned about the opinions of others, but instead was concerned about those who were sent from God.
From the time Lydia prevailed upon Paul and his followers to stay in her house (v. 15) until the last verse of chapter 16, Paul had nothing but trials and troubles. First, as he was on the way “to the place of prayer,” a slave-girl followed after Paul and the others who had a spirit of divination and cried out for days that these were bond-servants of the Most High God. Eventually Paul commanded the demon to come out of her in the name of Jesus Christ. The demon instantly obeyed and she was delivered from the demon. However, her masters had made a lot of money with her and her demon and they were not happy when the demon was gone. So they dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities. The crowd rose against them and the chief magistrates ordered them to be beaten and thrown into jail. The situation, then, is that the men who were with Lydia now had virtually the whole town against them and the law thought of them as being troublemakers. The common sentiment was certainly against Lydia.
Paul and Silas were in jail and a great earthquake hit. The jailer was about to kill himself but Paul cried out for him not to harm himself. Eventually the magistrates ordered the men released but this was not good enough for Paul. He wanted to know how it could be that they could just be released when they were Roman citizens and had been publicly beaten and thrown into jail. Now the judges just wanted to send them quietly away. The magistrates then came and kept on begging them to leave the city. It was at this point that Paul and Silas went out of the prison and entered the house of Lydia (v. 40). They were still welcome at that house and evidently Lydia had housed the rest of the men who were not put in jail with Paul and Silas because when they arrived at her house “they saw the brethren.” The Gospel was what got Paul and Silas into trouble with the citizens and with the law. But Lydia stood by Paul and Silas. Surely this showed that she was truly converted and now a lover of God and of His children.
What we see with Lydia, then, was a woman who had a heart that had good soil. It was a heart that had been broken up and then renewed by God. It was the kind of soil like the side of the road that the seed landed on and the birds (devil) came and snatched it up. It was not the kind of soil that was on rocky ground and there was no root for the plant to go deep and so she did not fall away because of persecution or affliction. Her heart was not the kind of soil that had briars to choke out the weed with the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. Instead her heart was the kind of soil that had been prepared by God and so it heard that word and it received it. Her heart was opened by God and so she bore fruit. It would have been easy to have told Paul to keep going because of all the trouble and persecution that followed him, but she did not. She had the word deep in the good soil of her heart.
In the last newsletter article we looked at the fact that Lydia’s heart was opened by God and so she responded to the things Paul spoke. In the first part of this article we looked at the proof of her conversion in the sense that she loved the people of God even in the midst of persecution. It seemed as if the whole town and the magistrates were against Paul because of his message, yet she welcomed him into her house. While it is understandable from a human view that she would have asked him to keep going, from the view of a true conversion her hearts shows evidence of being changed. She did not just pray a prayer or make a commitment of the moment, but instead her whole heart was changed. The divine stamp of God was on her soul.
What we see in this text, then, is the promise of God stated in Acts 2:
37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” 40 And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” 41 So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. 42 They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
In accordance with verse 39 Lydia was one of the far off who was called to the Lord. The people in Acts were pierced in heart while Peter was preaching and asked Peter what they were to do. They were told to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are told that Lydia had her heart opened to respond to the things Paul preached. We can be quite sure that Peter and Paul did not contradict each other in terms of the Gospel message. Part of the whole Gospel message is repentance. God grants repentance to sinners and turns them from their sin that comes from a sinful nature and unbelief. God gives sinners new hearts and so they have a new nature which is a believing heart. When Lydia responded to the Gospel that was preached by Paul, this is to say that the Holy Spirit convicted her of her sin and gave her a new and believing heart.
Acts 16 goes on to say that Lydia was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, which was part of Peter’s message in Acts 2. If we make the assumption that she was a convert to Judaism, this would have been an enormous step for her. Turning from the Jewish faith to being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ was simply a change of life for her. True enough she was not a Jew by birth, but it would have been very hard to turn from a religion like Judaism to Christianity which was new and even scorned. As we can see from Acts 16, the message of Paul was scorned by all those in the area, but Lydia had a new heart and did not turn back. The hand of God was upon her.
In Acts 2 the result of the conversion of the people was that they devoted themselves “to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” This is what a truly converted heart looks like. The converted heart longs to have the teaching of the apostles and to fellowship with God’s true people. The converted heart longs to break bread with the people of God and to pray. A heart that has been broken from seeking the things of self is a heart that seeks the face of God in prayer. As a baby cries out for food and the touch of its mother, so a child of God wants the pure milk of the word and for the face of its Father. In persuading Paul and Silas to stay in her house, she demonstrated her hunger for more of the word that Paul preached. We cannot imagine that Paul would have stayed at her house and not have preached and prayed. This woman seemed to want the things of God above the opinion of others. Her soul had been made alive and she wanted the things of God.
When conversion is thought of as a soul that God has changed and made it focused on Him in love rather than on self in self-love, our view of the Gospel, of salvation, and of evangelism changes. Lydia and all who hear the Gospel when called by God are not just saved from hell and are not just called to make a decision, but their souls are truly translated from the kingdom of the devil to the kingdom of God. Those souls are now united to Christ and they are beloved in Him. These souls now have the love of God dwelling in them and they partake of His holiness (Heb 12:10). These are souls that are now “partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). While we have little evidence from Acts about Lydia directly, we have the whole Scripture to describe what happened to her. This woman’s heart was opened by God and she became His dwelling place. That is true conversion.
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