Righteousness: What does it mean to be Righteous?
I was studying the scriptures to understand the process involved in having a mansion in Heaven and I stumbled upon this statement made by Jesus: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…” (Matthew 6:33). I changed my course of study to know the virtue of righteousness, and I would like to share my findings with you today.
The story of Albina during the war shows that the act of righteousness is more than a theoretical essay;
“Albina and Dennis Przybyszewski lived in Stydyn, a small Polish town. When the Nazis began to take away the Jews, Albina and her husband took several young Jews into their home to save them. In May of 1943, a young Jewish man, his wife and her sister were
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The young couple was killed and Dennis Przbyszewski was taking away and subsequently killed. Albina ran to another village.
Ita went to another place. But they met again after two months in Sarny when they were being deported to labor camps in Germany. Ita was with another young Jewish girl, Batia. During the processing for departure the officials called out the name Przbyszewski, the people who stepped forward were Albina, her mother, Albina’s two young daughters, Ita and Batia.
During their entire stay in Germany, they lived together as one family and endured many terrific incidents until the end of the war.”
What is
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The righteousness from human doctrine is a filthy rag which is also called self-righteousness.
The best way to become righteous is to forsake human doctrines (including all false church doctrines) and to obey all the teachings of the Lord faithfully. You cannot fulfill the righteousness of the Lord without the presence of the Holy Spirit in your heart.
John chapter 16 verses 8 say: “And when He (the Holy Spirit) has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”
Is it Possible to be Righteous?
It is a pity that majority of the preachers in our generation have watered down the teachings of righteousness through misconception of the scriptures. Some of their misleading statements include:
a. “Only God can be righteous…”
b. “It is not possible for the earthly body to obey righteousness, so recite Psalm 51 always.”
c. “You are under the grace and not under any law (of Jesus), so the grace will take care of your incessant unrighteousness.”
d. “Just become a Christian, your character does not matter because Jesus’ righteousness will take care of you...”
If righteousness is an impossible virtue for us, then the Lord will not instruct us to seek His
and parted ways there. In Krakow, Alicia was staying at a rather large house with another
She had a mother, father, and one sister named Olga who survived with her too. When her father passed, she had to help out with the family. She became a dressmaker. She knew how to speak German because her father knew how to speak it well. When the SS arrived, everyone was taken and put into the ghettos.
I decided to watch the testimony of Sally Roisman, a holocaust survivor. Sally had a strictly orthodox family, with a mother, father, and 10 siblings. Their family owned a textile mill which made dresses and suits. Sally attended a Jewish girls school but didn’t get the chance to finish her education before her school was closed down. Her teachers said very good things about her and that made her and her mother happy. Sally later returned and studied to finish school after the war. She still studies to make up for her loss today. Her family lived in an apartment complex were 15 families lived. 50% of the families were Jews in the complex.
Lina Vilkas is a fifteen year old girl who is the protagonist of this story. She was taken, by the NKVD, from her house with her mother and brother to exile. Later in the story she meets Andrius and falls in love with him. She marries him after the war while moving from place to place. Andrius uses his misfortune as a fortune to help others. He takes care of Lina and her family as best he can. Nikolai Kretzsky is a young NKVD officer who helps Lina and her mother even after Lina insulted him. Mr Stalas is a Jew who is deported with the other people. He wanted to die with dignity. He is often referred to as The Bald Man. He confesses that he was liable for the deportation. Janina is a starry-eyed young girl who likes to help others and to talk to her "dead" doll. When few selected people are brought to the North Pole for more suffering, dozens of people die from cholera and pneumonia. Lina however, survives and manages to save Jonas and Janina with the help of Nikolai Kretzsky.
He gave her his coat and she told him the story with the Partisan unit. After walking or a block, Sava took her to this museum where there was a couple, Serif and Stela, and their baby son, Hebib, “Lola looked up and recognized her. It was the young wife who had given her coffee when she came to collect the laundry” (78). The couple had welcomed Lola into their home and gave her shelter. They gave her the Muslin name Leila, dressed her in Muslim clothes and told her that she was here as maid to help Stela with the baby. After weeks, Lola was getting used to living with Serif, Stela, and Habib and was less afraid of getting caught by German soldiers. One day Serif came back from library and had brought the Haggadah, a Jewish book, with him. Stela was worried about having the book in their house so serif returned it to the library of the mosque where it will probably not be found by the Nazis. Afterwards, they had traveled “outside the city, at a fine house with a high stone wall” (89), where Lola said goodbye to Stela and the baby and her and Serif walked into the dark.
Eva and Miriam were with their mother until a man asked if they were twins. Their mother said yes after asking if that was a good thing and then they were taken away never to see her again. Once taken away, they were brought to a barrack for twins, where they were kept until liberated. In school, Eva encountered a hard time because she was Jewish and the other children knew they could get away with blaming things on her.
•She joined the Polish Underground when WWII broke out. (The Polish Underground aided Polish Jews)
Her father helped Ruth and her aunt – whose two children had already been killed by the Nazis – get a job working at a leather factor outside the ghetto. He also managed to acquire false passports for the women, giving them Catholic names and identities. The plan was for the pair to escape during one of their regular trips to the bathhouse, where workers were taken weekly. “We were marched with guards on each side and marched back again,” explains Ruth. “On one of those events my aunt had the false passports. She explained to me, 'this is my chance'.” The two of them managed to run out of the bathhouse and on to the Aryan side of the road. “It was sheer luck. It was always, you might be lucky and you might not be. But it was worth taking that chance. "Like a cat, I have many lives, I think.” Ruth and her aunt pretended to be Catholic. uth did not 'look Jewish' and her not particularly religious family had already assimilated to Polish life. Ruth’s parents were tragically taken to Treblinka, the concentration camp, where they died. When she was 13, Warsaw was evacuated and
Vladek’s life during the Holocaust was gruesome, but regardless of what was happening in his own life Vladek was always thinking about the safety of Anja. Vladek loved Anja dearly, if anything happened to Anja Vladek would not care about his own life, and lose the will to live. When Anja and Vladek were separated in the concentration camp, Vladek found a woman and asked her if she knew if Anja is...
They all had to live in the Warsaw ghetto (“Children’s Diaries”). Halina, another child survivor, tells us what happened to her while in hiding. Halina and her family went into hiding with a friend of her mother in a basement (“Peabody”).... ... middle of paper ...
Salvation is not something we can attain through holiness on our own. By Christ doing God’s will and dying for us on the cross, we are made holy. The author put it like this, “Holiness, then, is not necessary as a condition of salvation – that would be salvation by works – but as a part of salvation that is received by faith in Christ” (p. 34). While Jesus was here on earth he lived a life that was perfectly holy. His holiness was not just attributed to that fact that he had no sin, but that he
Sophie was a Polish women and a survivor of Auschwitz, a concentration camp established in Germany during the Holocaust in the early 1940s. In the novel we learn about her through her telling of her experiences, for instance, the murder of her husband and her father. We also come to learn of the dreadful decision she was faced with upon entering the concentration camp, where she was instructed to choose which one of her two children would be allowed to live. She chose her son. Later we learn of her short lived experience as a stenographer for a man by the name of Rudolph Hoss, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. During her time there, Sophie attempted to seduce Hoss in an attempt to have her son transferred to the Lebensborn program so that he may have been raised as a German child. Sophie's attempt was unsuccessful and she was returned back to t...
Ofer, Dalia, and Lenore J. Weitzman. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 1. Print.
While she was studying profusely she interrupted her studies to “work and study Jewish culture at Yivo, the legendary research institute in Vilna, Poland.” (Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against The Jews 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986), Front Cover.) She studied here for a rewarding year and then returned to New York to study more with the Yivo. After the debilitating WWII ended, she went over to Europe where she helped the Jewish people “recreate schools and libraries, and she recovered vast collections of books. 2 seized by the Nazis”.
And again, “Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus. . . since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.” Gal. 2:16.