(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.