Philippians Introduction. Lydia, Philippi, and the Surprising Origins of a First Century Church
Philippians is one of those writings that many of us have heard quoted, but not many of us have actually sat with in context. It shows up in the New Testament as a short letter, four chapters, tucked in among other letters from Paul. But like every letter, it was written to real people in a real place with a real story behind it. If we want to understand what Philippians is actually saying, we need to slow down and look at where it came from and who first received it.
Philippians is a letter from Paul to a small community of Jesus followers in the city of Philippi. Paul is that name you hear all the time if you have been around church. He wrote a significant portion of the New Testament and spent much of his life traveling through the Roman world, starting communities of people who believed that Jesus is Lord. He would visit a city, share the message, form a community, stay for a while to teach and encourage them, then move on. Later, he would often hear reports about how things were going and write letters back to those communities. Philippians is one of those letters.
When we open a letter like this, we are essentially reading someone else’s mail. Paul is not writing a theological textbook. He is writing to a gathering of people who live in a particular city, with particular pressures and stories. The power of Philippians comes from listening in on what he says to them and then asking how that wisdom might speak to us. That is part of what Christians have meant by calling these writings inspired. They were not written to us, but they were preserved because the church discovered again and again that they were written for us. They carried a kind of wisdom that did not expire when the first century ended.
To really see that, though, we have to go backwards before we go forwards. Before we talk about the letter called Philippians, we need to look at the story of how that church began. That story lives in Acts chapter 16.
Acts is the book that comes right after the four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament. It is written by Luke, the same person who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and it picks up where that biography leaves off. In the opening of Acts, Luke says, “In my first book, Theophilus,” and then goes on to talk about what happened after Jesus. The first book is Luke. The second is Acts. In our modern arrangement we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, then Acts, which can hide the fact that Luke and Acts are meant to be a one two combination. First, the story of Jesus. Then, the story of how his people carried that story out into the world.
In Acts 16, Luke tells the story of Paul’s first visit to Philippi. He notes that Philippi was a major city in the region of Macedonia and a proud Roman colony. That detail matters. Philippi was a place where retired Roman soldiers would settle. Many of them were rewarded with land there after years of service. It carried status. It was soaked in Roman identity and Roman power.
When Paul and his companions arrive, they go to a riverbank outside the city where they expect to find people gathered to pray. There they meet a woman named Lydia. Luke tells us she is a merchant of purple cloth, which in that world was a luxury item. Purple dye was costly, so working in purple cloth suggests she was a woman of means and influence. She is also described as a worshiper of God, which tells us she is a Gentile who has turned to the God of Israel. She is not ethnically Jewish, but she has been drawn to the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.
As Paul speaks, something happens in Lydia’s heart. She responds to the message about Jesus and her whole household is baptized with her. She then invites Paul and his companions to stay at her home, and they accept. In only a few lines, Luke paints a picture of a woman who owns a home, leads a household, runs a business, and now opens her life and space to this new community that is forming around Jesus.
There is no mention of a husband. That absence is interesting in that world. It is not hard to imagine a story behind the story. Philippi was full of retired soldiers. Many men did not make it to retirement. War, sickness, and the everyday dangers of that world claimed lives regularly. It is not far fetched to imagine Lydia as a widow who inherited land or business from a husband who served in the Roman forces, and then had to build a life on the other side of loss. We cannot prove that. The text does not say it outright. But it fits what we know of the time. It at least reminds us that this is a real person with a history, not a flat character on a page.
Whatever the backstory, Lydia becomes central to the beginnings of the church in Philippi. Her home becomes a gathering place. Her household becomes the first community of Jesus followers in that city. She is the first person named in this story, and she will be the last person named when the chapter ends.
The next scene in Acts 16 moves us in a very different direction. We meet an enslaved girl who has a spirit that enables her to tell the future. Her owners are making a lot of money off of her. She follows Paul and his companions around, shouting that they are servants of the Most High God and that they are proclaiming the way of salvation. On the surface, what she says sounds like free advertising. But Luke tells us she does this day after day until Paul becomes deeply annoyed. Finally he turns, speaks directly to the spirit, and commands it to leave her. It does.
Right away we are thrown into questions about the spiritual world. Luke presents this as a very real spiritual situation. A young girl is under the influence of a spirit and her owners are profiting from it. Paul speaks in the name of Jesus and that spirit leaves. If you are someone who struggles with talk of spirits and demons, this passage will press against you a little. There are ways people try to soften it by explaining everything in purely natural terms, but Luke does not do that. He simply tells the story.
What might be even more interesting, though, is what Luke does next. He gives no follow up on the girl. He does not tell us what happens to her, whether she joins the community, whether she finds freedom economically as well as spiritually. Instead, he shifts all his focus to the reaction of her owners. When they realize their hope of profit is gone, they seize Paul and Silas, drag them before the authorities, and stir up the crowd. They accuse Paul and his companions of disturbing the city and promoting customs that are illegal for Romans. The city officials respond by having Paul and Silas beaten and thrown into prison.
That storytelling choice is important. Many of us, if we were telling this story, would be most interested in the supernatural element. We would want to know more about the spirit, how exactly Paul cast it out, what that looked like. Luke moves very quickly past that and zeroes in on the human side. The real problem he wants us to notice is the greed and power of the owners who exploited this girl and then reacted violently when their income stream was cut off. The spiritual situation is real. The injustice is central.
In a culture like ours where it is very easy for Christians to spiritualize everything, Acts 16 is a quiet check. Sometimes what we want to blame on unseen forces is very clearly rooted in human choices, power structures, and systems of exploitation. It is much easier to say, “The enemy is attacking me,” than to name financial greed, abusive power, or unjust situations that need to be confronted. Luke seems to want us to pay attention to those.
From there, the story moves into one of the more dramatic scenes in Acts. Paul and Silas are in prison. Around midnight they are praying and singing. An earthquake shakes the foundations of the prison, the doors fly open, and everyone’s chains fall off. The jailer wakes up, sees the doors open, and assumes the prisoners have escaped. In that world, a jailer who lost his prisoners could expect severe punishment, possibly death. He draws his sword to end his own life rather than face that judgment.
Paul calls out in the dark. “Do not harm yourself. We are all here.” The jailer rushes in, shaking, and falls before Paul and Silas. He leads them out and asks a question that carries more weight than he probably realizes in that moment. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved.”
Their answer is simple and loaded at the same time. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” It is not just “believe that Jesus existed.” It is “believe in the Lord Jesus.” Believe that he is Lord. Hand over allegiance. Surrender. Trust him as the one who now has authority over your life. That is the heart of the Christian confession.
Luke tells us that Paul and Silas then speak the word of the Lord to the jailer and to everyone in his household. In the middle of the night, he washes their wounds, and he and his family are baptized. Once again, we get a whole household responding together. We are so used to highly individual versions of faith that we can miss how communal these early stories are. Lydia and her household. The jailer and his household. Faith rippling through family networks, not just isolated individuals making private decisions.
At the end of the chapter, after Paul and Silas are officially released, they do not just slip out of town. They go back to Lydia’s house. Luke says that there they meet with the brothers and sisters and encourage them. Then they leave. The story that began with Lydia at the river now ends with Lydia’s home as the center of this young community.
All of this is the backdrop to Philippians. When you open that letter and read “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi,” these are the people you should picture. Lydia, who opened her home and her life. Her household, made up of whoever lived and worked under her roof. The jailer, whose life was turned upside down in a single night. His family, wrestling with the shift from Roman gods and Roman loyalties to the worship of Jesus as Lord. Possibly the former slave girl, now free of the spirit that had bound her, finding a new kind of belonging. Others who had joined in as the message spread.
Philippi itself matters too. This is not some neutral religious backdrop. It is a Roman colony full of retired soldiers and people who benefit from Rome’s power. When Paul writes later in Philippians about citizenship in heaven, about the humility of Christ, about power turned upside down, about suffering and joy, he is writing into that world. He knows the story of how this community began. He remembers who was in the room the first time. He carries their faces and their stories with him as he writes.
If you carry that background into your reading of Philippians, the letter comes to life in a different way. It is not just a collection of nice religious quotes. It is a pastoral letter to a particular community that was born out of risk, hospitality, disrupted power, and surprising grace.
So as you read Philippians, keep Acts 16 in the back of your mind. Remember Lydia and her household. Remember the slave girl and the anger of her owners. Remember the jailer, sword in hand, stopped by a word of mercy. Remember that this is where the story of that church began. Then let the letter speak, and see what this ancient correspondence might have to say to your life, your questions, and your own story of faith in the middle of your version of Philippi.
