Self denial

Rom 5 10" For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"

This is not commonly used to describe self denial. But the apostle has been dealing with the reasons that we enjoy a new self when we are saved.  5" And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Because God has poured out His Holy Spirit in us the apostle is saying that our old relationship with God was much worse when we were enemies , than this new relationship that is focused on being saved through substitution. In fact if you compare the old self with the new self ("how much more") its as if you cant remember what it was like to be the old self.  This is what the theologians describe our new self that we are enjoying all that we need already but not yet receiving it in its fullness. But the apostle is comparing this spiritual "death" to having no relationship to the old self in the way that we are secure in a salvation that had a beginning and will have an end. There is no relationship to our old self at the time of our salvation. We died. 

There is a clear effort by the apostle to distance us from our old self. Not just to talk about having something that was added in our salvation. You will find this imbalance in the amount of time that God describes the terrible circumstances in His relationship to the wicked as compared to the much more beauty that we experience when we are given new life. Why would God talk so much about how He deals with His enemies if it is impossible for His enemies to understand and learn from the instruction? I think its because He is trying to show the greater work of Christ on our behalf by describing the depth of the destruction that He saved us from. And in this sense He is saying that He has all the wicked on a leash so that we enjoy complete freedom as the consequence to giving God the absolute control to contain evil and corruption until we receive our full salvation. In this sense there is not law that can contain this new freedom because our subjection to the law died when we were saved. The beauty of self denial is that in not being able to save ourselves we are saved by trusting in grace alone. Because Christ reconciled us by a complete substitution we fall back on grace as the only way that we can be saved. We can now push death away because Christ has given us much greater power to overcome.