Romans 7:11

For sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me.

The reaction of sinful people to God's commandments is not due to the evil of the commandment but to the evil of human hearts. The sinful mind lyingly represents God's commandments as being opposed to human freedom, to human interests, and as being barriers to legitimate human desires and needs. The command of God, as in Eden itself, is made to appear as a frustration of something that man might rightfully have expected, or as the prohibition of some achievement people might have attained, had it not been for the commandment! All such thoughts, and countless other falsehoods, appear as the deceitfulness of sin, causing the poor violator to fall into the ways of death.

Lenski has the following perceptive word regarding this:

The commandment is lyingly made to appear as a disagreeable obstacle to the gratification of our desires, to our "free self-expression," to our "living our own lives." Forbidden fruits are sweet; and the commandment which forbids them is thus used as an impetus by the sin power to make us reach out after those fruits just because they are forbidden. Hid from us by the lying deception are the consequences, that once tasted, those fruits turn to ashes in our mouths, or that we can escape the bitter results as little as all the millions that have tried it, or that we can atone for our passions by doing some good. Ovid writes, "The permitted is unpleasing; the forbidden consumes us fiercely," and again, "We strive against the forbidden and ever desire what is denied."[7]

Regarding the manner in which the commandment becomes an occasion for sin, Whiteside has this:

Concerning the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God said to Adam and Eve, "Thou shalt not eat of it." By his lying speech, Satan deceived Eve. He did not deceive her by means of the commandment; but he took the commandment as an occasion to approach her, and deceive her into believing that it would be greatly to her advantage to eat the fruit. Death was the penalty for that disobedience. Hence, the devil seized the occasion, or the opportunity, presented by the command, and by his artful speech deceived her, and by the command slew her.[8]

[7] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963), p. 468.

[8] Robertson L. Whiteside, A New Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to Saints in Rome (Denton, Texas: Miss Inys Whiteside, 1945), p. 153.