Valjean becomes a criminal when he is caught stealing bread to feed his starving family.  After 19 years in prison, he is paroled.  At that time, Valjean has this exchange with Javert, his jailor:

Javert:

Now bring me prisoner 24601

Your time is up

And your parole’s begun

You know what that means

Valjean:

Yes, it means I’m free

Javert:

No! It means you get

Your yellow ticket-of-leave

You are a thief

Valjean:

I stole a loaf of bread

Javert:

You robbed a house.

Valjean:

I broke a window pane

My sister’s child was close to death

And we were starving

Javert:

You will starve again

Unless you learn the meaning of the law

Valjean:

I know the meaning of those 19 years

A slave of the law

Javert:

Five years for what you did

The rest because you tried to run

Yes, 24601

Valjean:

My name is Jean Valjean

Javert:

And I’m Javert

Do not forget my name

Do not forget me

24601

Valjean then meets a priest who shows compassion on him, providing some funds and singing, “And remember this, my brother.  See in this some higher plan.  You must use this precious silver to become an honest man.  By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness.  I have bought your soul for God!”

Long story short, Valjean jumps parole, changes identity, and quickly becomes a prominent citizen and then Mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer.  His life has changed because of God’s intervention in the person of the priest.  But Javert relentlessly pursues him, and when at last they meet Javert says, “Men like you can never change.  No, 24601, my duty’s to the law.  You have no rights.  Come with me, 24601.”

For those of us who know salvation, who have been redeemed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ, we have become the sons and daughters of God.  We have been adopted and given a new name.  I am no longer the Sam the Enemy used to know.  I am now Saint Sam.  I am hidden-in-Christ Sam.  I am no longer 24601.  But, there are times when Satan comes, and he mocks me and dredges up my old identity, and calls me by my old name.  And every time he does I am tempted to yield, to acknowledge his claim over me, to confess that I am, in fact, 24601.

I thought of this as I looked across at the fellow with the number on his back…and I thought of how I tend to carry my old number with me.  Is there corruption in my old life?  Yes.  Mrs. Chevely, the antagonist in An Ideal Husband, says to her apparently helpless prey, “No man is rich enough to buy back his past…not even you.”  She is right.  But Paul anticipated her and said, “I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus…forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).  And in another place, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).  These words from the persecutor of the Church.  If Paul can do this, certainly no credible charge can be brought against us.  Let us lay down our numbers and refuse to take them up again.  When our enemy moves against us, bullying us with our old name, let us cling to our new, true identity.