I occasionally post theology and Bible questions that get sent in by readers. Here is a question that was recently sent in about Acts 16 where it says that the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to heed the things spoken by Paul:

I was just wondering as someone who has moved away from Calvinism how you would handle this passage about Lydia:

On the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” So she persuaded us. . . . So they went out of the prison [Paul and Silas] and entered the house of Lydia; and when they had seen the brethren, they encouraged them and departed. Acts 16:13-15, 40, NKJV

I’m really trying to get my mind outside of Calvinism. But this passage always troubles me particularly the part about God opening her heart. I know there’s another passage of scripture that refers to Satan blinding us lest we believe and be saved.

I have no idea how to understand these since it sounds like God must unblind the unbeliever thus causing them to automatically believe. Of course, if he wants all to come to the saving truth then why doesn’t he do this for everyone?

Any help with understanding this would be awesome.

Here is my attempt at an answer about what  this means.

The Lord Opened Her Heart

Great question. You have hit upon one of the key texts which many Calvinists use to defend the fourth point of TULIP: Irresistible Grace. The way this passage is often taught is that prior to God opening Lydia’s heart, she was closed to God and Jesus Christ, closed to salvation, closed to the gospel, and closed to the message of eternal life. It is often pointed out that there were many women along the banks of the river in Philippi that day, but only one believed—the one whose heart was opened by God.

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The most misunderstood word in the Bible is also one of the biblical words we use the most. What word is that?

The word “saved.”

And not just the word saved, but the other words in the same word family, such as save, salvation, and savior.

How often have we heard pastors and teachers tell us of our need to “get saved”? How often do evangelists ask people if they have “been saved”? How often do people argue about whether or not we can lose our salvation, and how to know for sure if we are really saved or not?

This is common terminology, right? It is heard in countless sermons, read in countless books, and used in countless evangelism methods.

The problem is that the word doesn’t usually mean what we think it means.

Getting Saved is Not About Going to Heaven

Most often, when Christians use the word “saved” we think about the following concepts:

• getting forgiveness of sins
• escaping hell
• going to heaven when we die
• receiving eternal life

Furthermore, we think that people “get saved” by doing some (or all) of the following:

• ask Jesus into our hearts
• confess our sin
• repent of our sin
• get baptized
• believe in Jesus
• trust Jesus
• believe that Jesus is God,
• believe that Jesus died on the cross, and rose again from the dead
• believe that we are sinners and that Jesus died for our sin on the cross
• etc, etc, etc.

But did you know that the word “saved” (and the other related words like save and salvation) are rarely used to express any of the concepts above? The closest we get is Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9-10, 1 Corinthians 15:2, and Ephesians 2:5-9, and I am not convinced that even in these passages, the word “saved” means getting forgiveness of sins so we can escape hell, get eternal life, and go to heaven when we die. Taking a detailed look at each of these texts is beyond the scope of this blog post, so let me just summarize what the word saved means in the Bible.

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