The Unlikely Conversion of an Amazing Woman
Author: Stan Guthrie
August 26, 2026
This article continues our series on the founding of the church in Philippi, during Paul’s Second Missionary Journey. This information, I hope, will help prepare us for the Adult Sunday School, beginning on September 13: Discover the Greatest Life You’ll Ever Live: A Journey Through Philippians. Earlier installments will be found in the blog.
At first glance, you wouldn’t think Philippi would be high on the Apostle Paul’s list of candidates for gospel ministry in Europe. It was a Roman colony, populated by Roman veterans, governed by Roman law and completely loyal to the Empire. Although located along the strategic Via Egnatia, it was small by Roman urban standards, with no more than 10,000 to 15,000 residents. Other cities were much larger, including Thessalonica (perhaps 100,000-plus), Corinth (50,000-plus), and Syrian Antioch (150,000–250,000).
Moreover, the Jewish Diaspora across the Greek-speaking world had only lightly touched culturally Latin Philippi, a fact that theoretically threw a monkey wrench into the Apostle’s usual “to the Jew first” evangelistic approach. Acts 16:13, written by Luke the physician, tells us that after arriving in Philippi, “on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer.”
Because Philippi lacked even the ten Jewish men required by tradition to start a synagogue, Paul sought out an informal prayer group by the river. Flowing water in such places allowed ritual washings to be performed when there was no synagogue.
Once there, Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke found only women—no men—at the river. A less auspicious beginning could hardly be imagined in the ancient world. Yet we must remember that the Apostle had not chosen Philippi; the Lord had. Paul was only responding to the divine summons to “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9). So, Luke says, “we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together” (Acts 16:13).
And where the Lord calls, the Lord provides. One of the women was named Lydia, from Thyatira, a city in the region of Lydia some 300 miles to the southeast in western Asia Minor. While she may have been a former slave, Scripture merely calls her a “worshiper of God” (Acts 16:14), a Gentile who believed in Israel’s God without fully converting to Judaism.
Luke also calls Lydia “a seller of purple goods,” that is, a merchant in luxury purple-dyed textiles, a highly prestigious and profitable business. Purple goods were colored with costly murex dye, which was laboriously extracted from tens of thousands of Tyrian rock snails. Multiple dye-workshop ruins and vats have been found at Thyatira (in modern Turkey), and inscriptions there list various guilds of purple-dyers. Lydia thus was a wealthy and successful businesswoman, highly unusual in that time and place, who had set up shop in the Roman colony, where wealth and status were greatly coveted.
Then Luke mentions another miracle: “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). Note that Lydia didn’t open her own heart; the Lord graciously performed the spiritual surgery that only he can do—and made her born again.
And Lydia’s conversion was thorough, full of love. This amazing woman, who had acquired everything the world values, quickly made clear her allegiance to a new kingdom, offering costly hospitality to the Apostle Paul, who by comparison had nothing of the world’s goods (2 Cor. 6:10):
“And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.’ And she prevailed upon us” (Acts 16:15). Then, later, when Paul and Silas were released from prison and asked to leave Philippi, they made a point to visit Lydia and the other believers first (Acts 16:40).
And thus, amid small and unlikely beginnings, but enlivened by the Spirit of God, the first church in all of Europe was born. May we also expect the Lord to do great things through our own small acts of faithfulness among the amazing people we meet.
Stan Guthrie is Director of Outreach and Mobilization for New Covenant Church in Naperville, Illinois.
Image: A modern Greek Orthodox outdoor chapel on what is said to be the site where Lydia was baptized. By Ian W. Scott, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Next week: Apollo Versus Jesus in Philippi.
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