I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died (Rom 7:9).
What does Paul mean by alive and died in Rom 7:9? In what sense was he “alive once without the law”? And in what sense did he die “when the commandment came”? What is this life and death he was talking about?
He is clearly not talking about everlasting life and the second death. Once a person has everlasting life, he will never die (John 11:26).
Neither was he talking about physical life and physical death.
In Romans 7–8, Paul is talking about how to live a victorious Christian life. So in this context, to be alive is to be leading a victorious life, a life pleasing to God. To die in this context is to cease leading a victorious life, to stop pleasing God.
René Lopez comments:
Verse 9 then could be understood to mean that early in Paul’s conversion he was alive in fellowship with God without the law (6:8, 11, 13). But as soon as Paul tried to incorporate the Law into his Christian life sin revived and he died. That is, he died experientially when his fallen nature aroused sin to a greater degree severing his fellowship with God. As a result, the commandment Paul thought would bring a positive life experience (as originally stated in Lev 18:5) brought death. Not because the Law was bad, but because sin that was dormant deceived (7:8) Paul into thinking he could obtain life by focusing on a negative command. Thus, sin killed Paul’s spiritual fellowship with God. Continual focus on prohibitions does not lead to holiness but to more sin (by arousing desires; cf., 7:8) that results in an experience of death (cf., 7:9; Jas 1:14–16) (“Romans” in GNTC, p. 659).
Many commentators disagree with Lopez. They suggest that Paul was talking about his life before he came to faith in Christ. However, Lopez successfully defeats that claim.
I remember Bill Bright speaking about a young man who thought the solution to living a victorious Christian life was to keep the commandments in front of his eyes as much as possible. He taped a list of positive and negative commands to the mirror where he shaved in the morning and brushed his teeth at night. He had other lists in his car, attached to the rearview mirror. He kept lists in his pockets. He consulted these lists every hour.
Bill Bright said that after two weeks, the man threw out all the lists. He found that focusing on the commandments was driving him crazy and was not at all producing spiritual victory.
Our focus is to be on Christ, not on His commands. Yes, we study His commands and seek to obey them. But we focus on Him. We love Him. We want to please Him.
The Lord Jesus said that He is coming like a thief in the night, and we are to remain watchful for His imminent return (Matt 24:40-42). Paul and Peter reiterated the need to be watchful, noting that He is coming as a thief in the night (1 Thess 5:1-11; 2 Pet 3:1-12).
Paul said, “The love of Christ compels us” (2 Cor 5:14). John said, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). He also said, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The author of Hebrews said, “…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” (Heb 12:1-2).
What does a toddler’s mom do when she’s visiting a friend whose house is not set up for small children? She must watch the toddler carefully to see that he (or she) doesn’t play with electrical outlets, knock figurines off tables, or destroy anything.
But how does Mom do that? She doesn’t yell, “Don’t touch that!” It doesn’t work with an 18-month-old. In fact, yelling may make the toddler more likely to do that very thing.
The way Mom gets little Joey to turn away from the electrical outlet or from the table figurines is by getting him interested in something else. “Here, Joey, look at this colorful ball.”
While we may think that we, as adults, are way beyond needing to shift our focus away from commandments, the truth is that we, too, need to have our minds distracted in a positive way. We need to look elsewhere. Look at the Lord Jesus. He is the Bright and Morning Star. He will capture our attention in a positive way.
Keep grace in focus, and you will avoid the tempting trap of legalism.
