Romanos 7:9

‘And I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,'

This was what had happened to Paul, while he was still Saul. He had been striving with all his might to obey the Law, and had prided himself on how well he was doing (Gálatas 1:13; Filipenses 3:4), so much so that he had seen it as ‘making him alive' (‘the man who does these things will live in them' - Levítico 18:5; Gálatas 3:12). He had been confident that he was on the way to eternal life. The Law had not been speaking to him. He had been ‘apart from the Law'. (Some, however, see this as referring to his early life before at the age of around 13 he became committed to observe the Law at his Jewish ‘coming of age' ceremony)

And then the commandment had come and had spoken in his heart, and this had brought his sin ‘alive' (had revived it), and the consequence had been that he himself had ‘died'. He had recognised that the Law, instead of giving him life, because by his obedience to it he was ‘living in it', was instead pronouncing a sentence of death. It was pointing out that he was not alive at all. The result was that all his hopes of eternal life had collapsed, and he had recognised that all that awaited him was death. Spiritually he was stultified. (The rich young ruler who came to Jesus must have experienced something similar. Having observed the commandments from his youth up he had come to recognise that something vital was missing, which was why he had come to Jesus - Marco 10:17; Lucas 18:18).

However, we must not read too much into Paul's life and death language here. For parallel with Paul being ‘alive' and then ‘dead' we have sin being ‘dead' and then becoming ‘alive'. Yet it is quite clear that sin was not dead, it was still doing its evil work. And it is clear that it did not come alive literally. The language is all metaphorical. Thus we must not let our interpretation be swayed by trying to make the thoughts of ‘being alive' and dying' literal.

On the other hand it is, of course, very possible that Paul had seen in his experience a throwback to the Garden of Eden, and to the experience of Adam when he first sinned. He too had been alive apart from the Law, for the Law had not yet been given (although we may argue that he was under God's Law, for God had said of the tree of knowing good and evil, ‘you shall not eat of it'. That was Paul's argument in Romanos 5:12). But God's commandment that he should not eat of the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil had brought sin to life and he had succumbed to it and had died. And now the same thing had been repeated in Paul's own life. In typically Jewish fashion he could be seeing his own experience as involved in that of Adam (just as the Jew at Passover saw himself as again being redeemed). He may also have seen himself as echoing the experience of Israel when the Law had come to them, but only with the consequence that it resulted in their condemnation. The same had happened to him. ‘When the commandment came, sin revived and I died'. Thus it may be that he saw himself as very much involved in salvation history, not only that of Israel, but also that of Adam, and therefore mankind.

Note that in these few verses ‘the commandment' is the equivalent of ‘the Law', for the commandment was the part of the Law that had spoken to Paul. It is spoken of as ‘the commandment' because at this stage Paul has one commandment in mind.