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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 643. The Disciple of Christ
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The Disciple of Christ
(1) In the first place she received baptism-“And when she was baptized, and her household.” Not necessarily in an ostentatious manner, but in a way to make the fact known to all who had a right to know, and to all, no doubt, who would be made the better by knowing it, she walked through the open door of baptism into membership in the Holy Catholic Church. This “seller of purple” seems to have given not so much as a passing thought to the effect on her business of this step she was taking. She did not ask whether it would be likely to increase or decrease her popularity. She accepted Christ; and she wanted to be baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Considering all the circumstances, this was a remarkable exhibition of devotion and courage.
With her they also baptized her household-either her children, or the workers in her business, and perhaps her domestic servants. It was understood that the proselyte to Judaism took over his household with him. The same was sometimes done in the case of the earlier converts to Christianity. Thus the jailor of this same city of Philippi was baptized “with his household.”
But may we not, without overdoing hypothesis, see more in the baptism of Lydia's household than “the feeling of solidarity in an ancient family”? The whole narrative, so modestly, so chastely coloured, suggests a picture of modesty and gentleness which wield their own authority. Her character recommended her faith; her piety was persuasive-as it too often is not. She did not shut the gate of Christ's Kingdom in passing through, making it harder for others to follow. A woman who could beseech with such grace might well have learnt to command with equal grace.
(2) In the second place she was forward to extend Christian hospitality to those to whom she felt so greatly indebted for the new light and life brought to her. This was one of the first forms of service open to her, and she entered upon it without question or hesitation. “She besought us, saying, if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.”
When the quiet riverside scene and service came to be followed by violent persecutions, we lose sight of Lydia. But we may take it that her faithfulness was not shaken; for when Paul and Silas came out of prison they “entered into the house of Lydia.” We cannot be far wrong in judging that during those stormy hours she betook herself with her household to prayer and intercession. She would continue worthy of her guests, whether God would vouchsafe to let them return to her or not. Had she proved unfaithful, they would not have re-entered her house; had her love chilled, there would have been no open door for them. In sunshine and wild storm she had earned the right of repeating, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there.”
The dream of the world and the wheel of our dreaming,
The glow and the glory, the love and the strife:
These too are His making, for through them are streaming
The infinite forces that fashion all life.
But lo! as they break us and thwart us and bend us,
A touch through the whirring, the curve of a line,
When life is at darkest is felt to befriend us,-
A touch that is human, yet wholly Divine!
Then, deep in the furnace of torments infernal,
The rapture of Heaven we know and we feel:
His touch that we see not, untiring, eternal,
That yearns to our yearning, is guiding the wheel.
O Love, the indwelling, by Thee are we shriven,
Ineffable Comforter, Lord of delight!
To those who are born of Thy Spirit, is given
The quickening of peace in the thick of the fight.
Thou comest, and swift, through the doorways of dulness,
Come joy and vitality, glory and grace!
Who loves Thee will serve Thee with life in its fulness,
Or die at his post with Thy joy on his face.1 [Note: Annie Matheaon, Maytime Song of Solomon, 16.]
The family consisted of an old grey-bearded man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them.
They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup, a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table, and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast; 'twas a feast of love.
The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table; my heart was set down the moment I entered the room; so I sat down at once, like a son of the family; and, to invest myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon; and, as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it.
Was it this? or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet; and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour.
If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more Son_2:1-17 [Note: Sterne.]
2. Lydia was one who combined the virtue of practical common sense with those of a generous heart and an open mind. She was not ashamed to work for her living. She was not one of those women who consider a life of languid idleness to be the most enjoyable kind of existence. She followed an honest trade, and apparently was a person of considerable independence of spirit.
We have already noted her courage and her devotion to duty. To these she added a noble hospitality and a fine humility. She considered opportunities of kindness to be God's rewards, not His burdens. Charity was a privilege, to be won through faithfulness of service. There is womanly tact too in the way in which she words her invitation to Paul, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord.” It would be hard to refuse what she presented as a proof that Paul believed her to be sincere in her faith. She gracefully covers over the benefit to Paul, and makes out herself to be the obliged party. “Unless you come to my house, it will look as if you were not sure of me.” How could that kindly though transparent artifice be resisted?
Her charity was not a solitary star in the sky of the Philippian Church. Her spirit touched all the rest: “Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.” May we not fairly infer that this mother in Israel, first-named convert on European soil, had affected the whole of the little Church that gathered round her, and that as it continued to grow, her influence still remained strong? For we must remember that in the house of Lydia was cradled the Philippian Church-that Church which St. Paul afterwards described as his “joy and crown.”
One who knows what he wills and wills what he knows is a moral character. The ideal of his life is his firm possession, and he himself has become a conscious organ of this ideal. One who consciously experiences and wills to experience the sovereignty of God, and who consciously subjects and wills to subject himself to it in faith and love is a Christian character. The Christian character is the Christian life-ideal. The Christian character is the highest form of a moral personality.1 [Note: R. Seeberg, The Fundamental Truths of the Christian Religion, 324.]
3. We have all a direct interest in the story of Lydia; and the fact that the earliest convert on European soil was a woman may be looked upon almost as a significant prophecy of what the gospel was destined to accomplish for woman among the most advanced peoples of the world. In that fact we have the pledge and actual beginning of her elevation. She is no longer to be drudge, slave, plaything to man. She is to enter the Kingdom by his side. Lydia was the herald of the best kind of “new woman.”
St. Luke's story leaves Lydia in the place where every woman's life should be at its best-in her home. Lydia the hostess is perhaps the highest type of Christian woman. Her own table ought to be her highest place of honour; the family is her throne. What she is there, society will be in her time, and in the after-time. Every woman ought to covet the title of lady in its old acceptation-“breadgiver”-to her own folk first, and then to strangers.1 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 47.]
“Strange” with the glow of a wakened soul,
And “new” with the purpose of large endeavour,
She turned her face to the higher goal-
To the higher goal it is turned for ever.
Trade and science and craft and art,
Have opened their doors to the call of woman;
And greater she grows in her greater part,
More tenderly wise, and more sweetly human.
The woman wonder with heart of flame,
The coming man of the race will find her.
For petty purpose and narrow aim,
And fault and flaw she will leave behind her.
He grown tender, and she grown wise,
They shall enter the Eden by both created;
The broadened kingdom of Paradise,
And love, and mate, as the first pair mated.2 [Note: E. Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 13.]