Identification with Christ

Last year in Boone, NC, Shelby Jean White was found guilty of murder in the first degree. It was a bizarre case. She murdered a local woman, buried the body, and then took that woman's identity. For some months she pretended to be the other woman, writing checks in her name, using her name when she answered the phone, while carefully hiding her own identity. The ruse was discovered when family members thought her voice on the telephone did not sound like that of their relative.

Paul was not stealing the identity of another when he wrote, "It is no longer I that lives. It is Christ that lives in me." That exchange of identity was made possible, and proper, when Christ on the cross took our identity. He died in our place and now we live in His place.