{5} For I was alive without the {q} law once: but when the commandment {r} came, sin revived, and I {s} died.

(5) He sets himself before us as an example, in whom all men may behold, first what they are by nature before they earnestly think upon the law of God: that is, stupid, and prone to sin and wickedness, without any true sense and feeling of sin, and second what manner of persons they become, when their conscience is reproved by the testimony of the Law, that is, stubborn and more inflamed with the desire for sin than they ever were before.

(q) When I did not know the law, then I thought that I indeed lived: for my conscience never troubled me, because it was not aware of my disease.

(r) When I began to understand the commandment.

(s) In sin, or by sin.

People's New Testament

7:9 For I was alive without the law once. Without law. It would be much better if the translators would omit the article where Paul did not use it. Paul was alive, that is, was unconscious of condemnation, once. His conscience did not trouble him. He was like the young Ruler who said of the commandments: All these have I kept from my youth up (Mt 19:20 Mr 10:20 Lu 18:21). As touching the righteousness which is of the law, he was blameless (Php 3:6).

But when the commandment came, when he realized that it required a heart service as well as an outward service, then

sin revived. The dormant sin was brought to light when restraints came.

I died. Realized that I was a sinner; was convicted of sin. It is possible that reference is made to some supreme struggle. Perhaps in the stern persecution of the saints he was struggling for the righteousness of the law. Perhaps it was when Christ said, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest (Ac 22:8), that he first realized that Christ was the end of the law (Ro 10:4), and he died.

Wesley's Notes

7:9 And I was once alive without the law - Without the close application of it. I had much life, wisdom, virtue, strength: so I thought. But when the commandment - That is, the law, a part put for the whole; but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens. Came - In its spiritual meaning, to my heart, with the power of God. Sin revived, and I died - My inbred sin took fire, and all my virtue and strength died away; and I then saw myself to be dead in sin, and liable to death eternal.

Scofield Reference Notes

[2] when the commandment

The passage (vs 7-25) is autobiographical. Paul's religious experience was in three strongly marked phases:

(1) He was a godly Jew under the law. That the passage does not refer to that period is clear from his own explicit statements elsewhere. At that time he held himself to be "blameless" as concerned the law Phil 3:6. He had "lived in all good conscience" Acts 23:1.

(2) With his conversion came new light upon the law itself. He now perceived it to be "spiritual" (Rom 7:14). He now saw that, Song far from having kept it, he was condemned by it. He had supposed himself to be "alive," but now the commandment really "came" (Rom 7:9) and he "died." Just when the apostle passed through the experience of Rom 7:7-25 we are not told. Perhaps during the days of physical blindness at Damascus Acts 9:9, perhaps in Arabia Gal 1:17.

It is the experience of a renewed man, under the law, and still ignorant of the delivering power of the Holy Spirit Rom 8:2.

(3) With the great revelations afterward embodied in Galatians and Romans, the apostle's experience entered it third phase. He now knew himself to be "dead to the law by the body of Christ," and, in the power of the indwelling Spirit, "free from the law of sin and death" Rom 8:2 while "the righteousness of the law" was wrought in him (not by him) while he walked after the Spirit Rom 8:4, Romans 7. is the record of past conflicts and defeats experience as a renewed man under law.

Margin sin

Sin. See Scofield Note: "Rom 5:21".

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. For I was alive without the law once-"In the days of my ignorance, when, in this sense, a stranger to the law, I deemed myself a righteous man, and, as such, entitled to life at the hand of God."

but when the commandment came-forbidding all irregular desire; for the apostle sees in this the spirit of the whole law.

sin revived-"came to life"; in its malignity and strength it unexpectedly revealed itself, as if sprung from the dead.

and I died-"saw myself, in the eye of a law never kept and not to be kept, a dead man."

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:7-13 There is no way of coming to that knowledge of sin, which is necessary to repentance, and therefore to peace and pardon, but by trying our hearts and lives by the law. In his own case the apostle would not have known the sinfulness of his thoughts, motives, and actions, but by the law. That perfect standard showed how wrong his heart and life were, proving his sins to be more numerous than he had before thought, but it did not contain any provision of mercy or grace for his relief. He is ignorant of human nature and the perverseness of his own heart, who does not perceive in himself a readiness to fancy there is something desirable in what is out of reach. We may perceive this in our children, though self-love makes us blind to it in ourselves. The more humble and spiritual any Christian is, the more clearly will he perceive that the apostle describes the true believer, from his first convictions of sin to his greatest progress in grace, during this present imperfect state. St. Paul was once a Pharisee, ignorant of the spirituality of the law, having some correctness of character, without knowing his inward depravity. When the commandment came to his conscience by the convictions of the Holy Spirit, and he saw what it demanded, he found his sinful mind rise against it. He felt at the same time the evil of sin, his own sinful state, that he was unable to fulfil the law, and was like a criminal when condemned. But though the evil principle in the human heart produces sinful motions, and the more by taking occasion of the commandment; yet the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good. It is not favourable to sin, which it pursues into the heart, and discovers and reproves in the inward motions thereof. Nothing is so good but a corrupt and vicious nature will pervert it. The same heat that softens wax, hardens clay. Food or medicine when taken wrong, may cause death, though its nature is to nourish or to heal. The law may cause death through man's depravity, but sin is the poison that brings death. Not the law, but sin discovered by the law, was made death to the apostle. The ruinous nature of sin, and the sinfulness of the human heart, are here clearly shown.