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.
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