Romans 7:9

For I The "I" is emphatic. Through this section, as often elsewhere, Sin is quasi-personified, and distinguished from the Self which nevertheless it fatally infects. It is an alien thing, an invasion, which (at the Fall) broke in on Man's nature created upright. In this representation of Sin, no extenuation of personal guilt is meant: with St Paul "every soul that doeth evil" incurs for itself the Divine wrath. But the separability in thought of Sin and the Self is not only true in fact, but suggests the gracious coming deliverance of the Self from Sin. We are not to view the Self as a good principle opposed to the evil principle;it is the subjecton and in which the evil principle works; but it is not therefore identical with it, and is capable of being worked on and in by the Divine Principle.

was alive Here the context explains again. Subjectivelyhe was "alive;" unconscious of resistance to God, and alienation from Him, and condemnation. See note on Romans 6:13, ("as those that are alive, &c.,") where the true"life" (of acceptance) is remarked on. The state here referred to was, as it were, the phantom of that. In this, he took for granted his acceptance before God, or at least did not realize the opposite.

the commandment came Came home to conscience and will, in the midst of this fancied "life" to God.

revived Sin is viewed as (1) invading the soul (ideally, in the Fall); then as (2) dormant till the Law crosses it; and now as (3) roused to direct energy.

I died i.e., "my previous state of consciousness was reversed." I became subjectivelydead; I "found myself" alienated and doomed. Evidently the ideas of "death" and "life" here vary, as applied to Sin and Self. The "death" of sin before its "revival" was torpidity. The "death" of self on that revival of sin was sense of doom.