Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. — Paul traces a personal or rhetorical history (or Israel's history): before the law's encounter, the "I" lived in innocence; the law's arrival activated sin, and the self experienced death—the death sentence that follows transgression. The νόμος (nomos, "law") is not the problem but the occasion of sin's eruption and the consequent judgment of death.

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