Imagine for a moment that you are a highly successful cat burglar. Then one rainy night, you discover that you are not as good a driver as you are a cat burglar, and you are killed—graveyard dead.

They bury you, and word spreads to a dozen police agencies that your miserable career has finally ended the hard way and they put your files where the files of dead people go and forget about you. In the words of the Apostle Paul, you have become dead to the law.

Now let’s change the story just a little. You didn’t really die. That was someone else’s body in the car, and you were able to stand in the bushes and watch your own funeral. You are dead to the law in the body of the other man.

You can get a new identity, and start a new life. Paul writes of this opportunity and this state of being in Romans 7.