The very condensed explanation is easy to understand. Paul is making a comparison between two experiences he hd. He [thought of himself as being alive] before he understood the commandment about coveting. Then afterwards when he became convicted by the Law, he knew he was nothing more than a dead sinner. Paul is not saying that he was actually alive spiritually.
Let's look at Romans 7, remembering that the definition of "dead" , which you shoe-horn into selective verses to make them "teach" your doctrine, is "
unable to hear, see, understand or do anything."
Rom. 7
4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also
are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him
who is raised from the dead,
that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
According to your definition, Christians have become dead to the law: unable to hear, see, understand or do the law..
5 For when we were in the flesh,
the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members
to bring forth fruit unto death.
According to your definition, when Christians were previously living in the flesh, before regeneration, the law produced pathEma,, influencesvia sin to make them break the law.
6 But now we are delivered from the law, t
hat being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
According to your definition, now the regenerate Christian cannot be influenced by the law because the law is now dead, so the law cannot see, hera, understand or do anything in the Christian's life.
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay,
I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
The knowledge of sin came by hearing the law, nit by being conceived. Before we hear any moral law, there can be no awareness of sin.
,.
8
But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.
For without the law sin was dead.
According to your definition, without the law, sin had no abiltiy to see, hear, understand or do anything in my life.
9
For I was alive without the law once: but
when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
Since sin had no power over me before the law came, I was not yet slain by the law, so I was spiritually alive without the law before the law enabled sin to kill me. It was only when the commandment cam that sin subsequently rose from its powerless death. According to your definition of dead, sin, being dead, could not raise itself from death. Only God can have raised the dead sin to life. So your definition of dead/death makes God the one who empowered sin to use the law to kill me. According to you God gave sin life and gave sin a weapon to kill me with.
10 And
the commandment, which was ordained to life,
I found to be unto death.
However, Paul says the law was decreed for life, nit for death. So, your definition creates a contradiction in God's word.
11
For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it
slew me.
Had not God given life to dead sin, the law would not have become a weapon that dead sin could use. But according to your definition, of death, God awakened sin in order that I would become dead: unable to see, hear, understand or do anything spiritual that pertains to God.
12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good..
Paul says that the law is holy, just and good. But your definition But you have made it into a weapon God devised to deliberately render me deaf, blind and completely unable to do His will.
13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid.
But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
Paul refutes the logical entailments otf your definituon of dead. Sin was not dead by your definition, but dead by the general definition of separated from life.. Sin was not attached to my life before I sinned against they law. It was then that sin began to live parasitically, by commandeering parts of my my living body and mind. I let sin in. God did not put sin in me. God allowed it so that I might learn how despicable sin is out there and now also in here.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but
I am carnal, sold under sin.
The law set good goals for and limits onto society. But now that I have allowed sin to get into me, I find I am not wise or self-disciplined enough persistently refuse to obey sin's influence,.I am like a slave. I am intimidated by fears to do things that are against my will. And whatsoever I am obeying, to that I am being a slave.
15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18 For I know that in me (that is,
in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for
to will is present with me; but
how to perform that which is good I find not.
19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
The sin parasite acts like a computer virus, and hinders me from fulfilling my desires to consistently keep the moral laws I have been given.
24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?
Accoprding to your definition of dead, the unregenerate man given a moral law discovers that He can neither see, hear, understand or do anything spiritual pertaining to God.
But wait a minute. If he cannot see, hear, or understand anything pertaining to God, how does he know that he cannot see, herar, undestand or do anything spiritual pertaining to God? He cannot possible discover that spiritual truth. until God forst regenerates Him. But he does not ask, "Who
has regenerated me and delivered me from this body of complete inability to see, hear, understand and do anything spiritual pertaining to God?"
he asks "Who
will deliver me from the body of this complete inability to see, hear, understand and do anything spiritual pertaining to God?""
So, he is still unregenerate and dead when He cries out for deliverance from this insidious virus pervertingb His life.
25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Then he discovers the gospel, and how Jesus frees us from our separation
According to your definition, this must be about physical death, where the body cannot see, hear, understand or do anything at all. Dead mans dead. Right?
. But really it is deliverance from a physical body separated from God's life because the sin virus has infiltrated and sabotaged the body's ability to remain connected to God through submission to the spirit and soul of the unregenerate.man who has had his conscience activated by hearing and understanding some moral law..
Your special pleading reading of "spiritual death" and "spiritually dead" into the biblical revelation , if applied consistently,, creates this spaghetti of nonsensical doctrine.