Every man is born to rule himself. God has given every man the ability to rule his kingdom through the law. God has made man like Himself. He has written His law on mans heart. Our natural way of expressing our power is to measure ourselves against Gods law so that we can rule. But when sin entered the world we became our own god. We now miss apply the law for our own benefit. Since we do not judge correctly we are our own enemy. This imaginative process by which we view ourselves is called the process of destruction or the curse.

Because we naturally judge everything around us by comparing it to the law it is impossible to reverse our thinking and view everything by how we use the law. This focus on how we use the law must be gifted to us in receiving eternal life. The old process by which we obtained power by using the law to benefit ourselves was killed. But we are required to put it to death by word and Spirit. There is nothing that opposes the elect that can overcome the pronouncement of death. When the bible says that our old life is past it is saying that the whole reality that we lived in before we were saved was put to death.
This death pronouncement was Christ taking upon Himself our punishment of death and giving us eternal life. He became a curse for us. But because we still are corrupted and sinful we must oppose the curse. If we do not oppose the curse then we will be hardened through the natural guilt, fear, sorrow that still dwells in us.
How do we oppose the curse? By putting to death the flesh. The law is not a guideline to follow. The law is God Himself speaking in creation and recreation. All of Gods law is always present as if God were speaking. What is the power in the law? It is not correction but it speaks death. The law is the instrument by which God allows and prevents. Because the law changes everything by killing the opposition it is the absolute standard of God that controls all things in this world. If we break the smallest commandment of the law we must die. You see the law is not a human institution that establishes human authority but it stands over all things and controls all things by Gods pronouncements.
In our natural state we put hope in our best efforts,the temporary function of the law to judge people and the self protected standard by which we rule over people. But the Psalms teach that these half measures are our attempt to usurp Gods authority and become our own god. We seldom apply the law through the pronouncement of death. We seldom use the law to prevent and allow. But we are required to use the law to kill the flesh.