Lydia

From BibleWiki

The Apostle Paul was on his second missionary journey when he travelled to Philippi in Macedonia to preach the gospel. It was here that he met Lydia from the city of Thyatira. Thyatira was in an area that Paul had been forbidden to enter. Lydia became Paul's first European convert and the first European baptized.

Lydia was an entrepeneur who dealt in scarlet and purple-dyed goods. The purple dye, made from a certain type of mollusk (purpura murex), was extremely expensive. It was used for the stripes in the togas of Roman senators. She had relocated her business from Thyatira to a major thoroughfare on the Gangas River in Philippi and supplied textiles to both the Romans and the Persians. It was Lydia's customers who imprisoned Paul and Silas.

Lydia was a religious woman, a proselyte of the Hebrew faith, who gathered with other women for prayer but was still lost. Proselytes were pagans who accepted the ethical monotheism of Judaism and attended synagogue, but who did not feel obligated to keep the whole Jewish law. They did worship the only true God and did so with specific acts.

One sabbath Paul and his followers left the city to preach by a river. It was there that the Lord opened her heart. She and her household were baptized, and she invited Paul and his other companions, to make her house their church in Philippi. From this humble beginning, this church grew and became an active Christian community, evangelizing, sharing its resources and sending their own people to aid Paul in his work and when he was imprisoned. Paul returned to this church on three different occasions.

• See also Lydia (province)