Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 7:9

"And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died;" — Romans 7:9 (ASV)

I was alive.—The state of unconscious morality, uninstructed but not yet uncondemned, may, compared with that state of condemnation, be regarded as a state of “life.”

Revived.—The English version well represents the meaning of the original, which is not that sin “came to life,” but that it “came to life again.” Sin is lurking in the heart from the beginning, but it is dormant until the Commandment comes; then it “revives.”

I died.—Became subject to the doom of eternal death.