You’re the Worst Person in the World

Excerpt Taken from You’re the Worst Person in the World: Why It’s the Best News Ever that You Don’t Have It Together, You Aren’t Enough, and You Can’t Fix It on Your Own by Scarlet Hiltibidal

My Hero on the Cross

But of course, you are not reading this book because you think my dad is the answer. We have a better hero for a deeper need. I may not often be physically cold or hungry or dirty, but my heart is all those things all the time.

My heart is cold; it’s not naturally warm with empathy for the suffering of those around me. My appetite is insatiable; I long for more physical comfort and more clothes and more gadgets and more fuzzy socks, which leads me to store up treasures on earth rather than in heaven (see Matt. 6:19–20). And I’m dirty; even when I’m physically clean, my heart is deceitful (Jer. 17:9); I sometimes do good, but my motives are often (perhaps, always?) at least some degree of unclean.

Even my righteousness is a filthy rag (Isa. 64:6).

But there is a Dad in heaven who wants to rescue me. Let your heart remember this is true. The Father sent His Son to a cross to give us riches when we only knew lack. And it’s not like the Son wasn’t up for it. It’s not like He was forced. On the contrary, He volunteered. He willingly went to that place of agony for us (John 10:17–18; Heb. 12:2). Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, our Hero who came for us when we were trapped and stuck and starving, we have an honest-to-God treasure.

Jesus isn’t some distant, abstract, ethereal Name that weak, scared people throw around to feel better. Jesus is a person. He’s our real hero. He saved us and saves us again, daily, from running to lies that make us feel like we’re good without Him, lies that make us believe we are the best and that everything we need for happiness is found within us or around us.

We are always in need of a Rescuer. We are forever dependents—forever in our Dad’s care, forever needing to trust Him to meet our needs in this world He made with His Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3, 14 niv)

Because God came into this broken world and lived among us and so loved the worst of us, we CAN walk in freedom. Daily, gospel-happy freedom. We can defeat the lies. We can silence the lists. We can step out of poverty and admit our own desperation and discover that, “He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?” (Rom. 8:32). Because of Jesus, because He actually was the best human, we reap all the benefits of His bestness.

But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of 2 Corinthians 5:

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us . . . (2 Cor. 5:17–19)

PAUSE for effect right here because we’re about to hit my favorite part—so underline, star, dog-ear, write it up and down your forearms: “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21).

Verse 21 really gets me. We, in Jesus, become the righteousness of God! Do you see what this means? When we go to God to trade in our sin—our attempts at attaining our own righteousness—what do we get in return? God’s righteousness! In Christ, God gives us His own righteousness to stand on—and who in the world is more righteous than God? No one! Who in the world would try to stand on their own righteousness when this kind of divine righteousness is offered to them? Who would refuse such a flawless track record and say, “Yeah, God, I’m sure Your record is great and all, but have You seen mine? Clearly I’ve got this!” And yet isn’t that what we do sometimes? We are, whether we recognize it or not, lacking righteousness, in need of forgiveness—truly poor and destitute before the King of kings, to whom all “Blessing and honor and glory and power be . . . forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13). And in His grace, He opens our eyes to this sad state of things and lets us see all the right standing we could have in Him if we’d only admit we need it.

We are poor, but we are heirs, because of the riches and glory of our adoptive Father.

The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom. 8:16–17)

We are poor in spirit. We are naturally trapped on the ice with nothing to eat. We are stuck in The Shack, with the bugs and the bare shelves. But we don’t have to live that way. We can be free. We get to be happy people when we recognize our neediness and fall into the strong arms of our Savior.

But why don’t I let you read it in His own words:

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.” (Luke 4:16–21)

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Order your copy of You’re the Worst Person in the World: Why It’s the Best News Ever that You Don’t Have It Together, You Aren’t Enough, and You Can’t Fix It on Your Own by Scarlet Hiltibidal