How can you die and be alive at the same time? - Romans 7:9

For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

Romans 7:9

When Paul says, “I was alive”, and then says, “and I died”, I’m sure that seems like a pretty strange statement for some readers. It’s easy to think of Paul as being alive, but how can you die and be alive at the same time? I think of our Savior telling Nicodemus in John 3, “You must be born again”. Nicodemus replies, “How can a man be born when he is old?” We know the Lord was speaking of the spiritual birth, and Nicodemus was not aware of a spiritual birth, so he was thinking about physical things. Nicodemus knew that to go back into a woman’s womb and have another birth wasn’t possible. He missed our Lord’s point that night, but I think as we continue reading about Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, he came to understand and experience the new birth!

Paul, in this verse, is speaking as our Lord did to Nicodemus, about spiritual truth. Paul was born into this world, like all of us, with the mentality to understand only a couple of things: hunger and dirty diapers. Of course, he could not read or understand the commandments of the law. Even as a little boy, that sin nature was in him, but it lay there undisturbed and dormant and never bothered him at all.

As Paul began to grow, and even into adulthood, he knew the commandments and Old Testament law. He sat under the teachings of those considered by man in his days to be the greatest teachers, but Paul never really understood the purpose of those things. So it just lay there undisturbed and dormant.

But one day Paul came to the understanding that the commandments did not make him holy, but they proved that he was unholy and that he must be judged and would die in his sin. Paul was living in ignorance of this truth while being exposed to it time and time again. Now “sin revived” when he understood the truth behind the commandments! The sin nature no longer lay dormant and undisturbed, but smote his heart and proved his need for a Savior! In Romans 7:24, Paul cries out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” In vs 25, he says, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Some are living in innocence today; they are too young to grasp the truth concerning the commandments. Some are living in resistance. They know the truth, they know they need a Savior, but will not repent and turn to Him through the gospel message. Some today will die in negligence; they waited too long, and now it’s too late. Some today will step out of this world into the presence of their Savior because when “sin revived”, they “died”!

When we realize there is nothing we can do to save ourselves but to admit

that we are unholy and dead in our sin, we then can and will receive forgiveness and righteousness through and by our Savior who died in our place!