Is the text suggesting that the law reveals sin? In Rom. 3:20 Paul asserted that “knowledge of sin is through the law.” The dissemination of specific commands clarifies that human beings have not kept God’s law. The knowledge of sin, then, includes the idea that one becomes aware of sin through the law (Timmins 2017: 111–17; Cyril of Alexandria in Bray 1998: 182). But the knowledge of sin here, transmitted through the law, extends beyond the mere revelation of sin already present; the law also exacerbates, provokes, and stimulates sin.

lit. a base or circumstance from which other action becomes possible, such as the starting-point or base of operations for an expedition, then gener. the resources needed to carry through an undertaking (e.g. even commercial capital), in our lit. (also Ar. 2, 7; Just.; Tat.; Mel., HE 4, 26, 5; Ath., R. 49, 235 al.) a set of convenient circumstances for carrying out some purpose occasion, opportunity for someth., a meaning found in Attic Gk. and also quite common in the Koine

He is primarily dealing with wrong desire, which in Jewish thinking was considered to be at the heart of all sin

The final statement in Paul’s explanation here, his statement in 7:8a that “apart from the law, sin is dead,” must not be understood in the sense that “if the law were not present, people would not be troubled by sin.” That would be just as obviously false as the statement “the law is sin.” Paul is using dramatic and forceful language, and one must not take too literally the reference to sin being dead.

Who is this “I” that is spoken of in this passage, and to what time is the passage referring? Later in 7:14–25 we will argue that Paul uses the first-person pronoun “I” in a more “gnomic” or general sense of people who attempt to live out their lives in their own strength, but who find in those attempts not only frustration but also spiritual schizophrenia and personal disaster. Here in 7:7–12, however, his language is so personal and so related to a time in the past that it seems necessary to posit that Paul is recounting his own experiences as a Jewish Pharisee prior to being encountered by the risen and exalted Christ. Thus, in agreement with John Calvin, we argue that Paul’s statements in 7:7–12 should be understood as his recollections of (1) a time when as a Pharisee he thought that by keeping the law “sin became dead” in his own life and he became “spiritually alive,” but also, conversely, (2) a time in his life when “sin sprang to life through the commandment” against covetousness—and, more importantly, (3) a time when he began to understand, under the guidance of God’s Spirit, that God’s law is not just “letters” in a body of legislation, but divine instruction that condemns sin and points beyond itself to the God who gave it.