Holy Bible - Obsidian Study Guide

Lystra

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Lystra

Overview

  • Testament: New
  • Region: Lycaonia, Roman province of Galatia (modern south-central Turkey)
  • Key Books: Acts, 2 Timothy
  • Summary: A small Roman colony in Galatia; site of Paul’s miraculous healing of a lame man and his subsequent stoning; hometown of Timothy, who became Paul’s closest companion.

Profile

Lystra was a Roman colony in the region of Lycaonia, established by Augustus around 26 BC as part of a network of military colonies in southern Galatia. It was a smaller and more provincial town than the nearby Pisidian Antioch, with a mixed population of Roman colonists, Hellenized Lycaonians, and indigenous peoples who maintained their own Lycaonian tongue (Acts 14:11 notes that the crowd spoke “in the speech of Lycaonia”). It lay on the road through Galatia that Paul would traverse on all three of his missionary journeys.

Paul first came to Lystra during the Paul’s First Missionary Journey after being expelled from Iconium (Acts 14:6). The ministry there began dramatically: Paul healed a man who had been lame from birth and had never walked — reminiscent of Peter’s healing at the Beautiful Gate in Jerusalem (Acts 3). The crowd’s response, however, reveals the thoroughly pagan religious environment: identifying Barnabas as Zeus and Paul as Hermes (because he was the chief speaker), the priest of Zeus brought oxen and garlands to sacrifice to them at the city gates. Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes in horror and delivered a foundational sermon on the living God and his sovereignty over nature — the first recorded Christian preaching to a purely pagan audience without any synagogue framework (Acts 14:15-17).

The abrupt reversal came when Jews from Antioch and Iconium arrived and turned the crowd. The man they had moments before been trying to worship was stoned, dragged out of the city, and left for dead (Acts 14:19). Whether Paul was miraculously raised or simply survived a brutal stoning, he got up, entered the city, and the next day pressed on to Derbe. His letter to the Galatians mentions “the sufferings which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra” (Galatians 3:11 variant) — and 2 Timothy 3:11 records Paul reminding Timothy specifically of “what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.”

The most lasting fruit of Lystra was Timothy. When Paul returned to Lystra on the Paul’s Second Missionary Journey, he found a young disciple, “the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:1). Timothy was “well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium” (Acts 16:2) — the very communities in which Paul had suffered most — and Paul circumcised him and took him as his closest companion. Second Timothy 3:10-11 is written from Paul to Timothy, who knew from childhood everything Paul had suffered in his hometown.

Key Events

Key Verses

“And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked.” — Acts 14:8

“And they stoned Paul, and drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.” — Acts 14:19

“Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and, behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus.” — Acts 16:1

Cross-References

  • Timothy — hometown; his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois were believers here
  • Paul (Apostle) — stoned here; returned here; suffered here; remembered Lystra’s trials in writing to Timothy
  • Barnabas — present for the Zeus/Hermes episode; mistaken for Zeus because of his bearing
  • Paul’s First Missionary Journey — the journey during which the stoning occurred

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