It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adams, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
At least in America the overwhelming thought is that people need to think well of themselves in order to treat other people as they should be treated. This basic thought has also overwhelmed the professing churches as well. Rather than the biblical teaching which is that love for God is that enables human souls to be aligned with God and then man, this teaching is directly opposite of the biblical teaching. Even worse, or perhaps to add to its evil, the thought that man loves others based on a love for self is really to make man his own god and idol. How deceitful the teaching is that directs man to love himself and tell him that to be moral and treat others he must do that.
As usual this type of teaching can be traced back to the fall where Eve listened to the evil one and ate the apple in order that she could be her own god and determine for herself what was good and evil. This thinking well of ourselves is completely opposite of the reality of fall and what we are as a result of sin. Thinking well of ourselves makes us prone to disregard grace if not despise it. Instead of thinking well of ourselves, we should be like Paul who groaned, thought of himself as a wretch, and wondered who would deliver him from his body of death (Rom 7:24). We should also remember that Jesus taught us to hate our own lives (Luke 14:26) and that we must deny ourselves if we were to be followers of His. We must think deeply on the Gentile woman that Jesus called a dog and she responded humbly (Mat 15:26-27).
A person that is going to live by grace is not a person that lives by thinking well of self. A person that lives by Christ does not esteem self but esteems Christ. While the bumper sticker and the t-shirt theology tells us that God did not make junk, the Bible speaks of what man has done in the fall and then the continuing sin as a result of the fall. What man is does not reflect necessarily on how God made man, but on what man did when the evil one tempted and lied to man. Now, it would seem to be quite clear, not only did the evil one lie to Adam and Eve in the Garden and get them to focus on themselves rather than (or even opposed to) God, the lies continue. The evil one is opposed to God because God does all out of love for Himself (as triune) and His own glory while the evil one (not triune) does all out of love for himself and his own honor. The evil one wants all human beings to be opposed to God and love and live for themselves like he does, while the Gospel of Jesus Christ saves human beings from themselves (the heart of sin) and delivers them into the kingdom of Christ where He is the one that reigns in their hearts rather than self. God delivers sinners from themselves and grants them that they may love Him and His glory. This is a key divide between biblical Christianity and the false forms of it.
So the devil is at war with God for human souls and their ultimate allegiance. He works in his deceptive and devious ways to get human beings to focus on themselves and to think well of themselves. In modern America he has gotten people to think that they must love themselves before they can love others. The reality of the matter, however, is that this is nothing but another lie that correlates to his original lie to our parents in the Garden. If human beings must love themselves in order to love other human beings, then they are only loving others (which is not true love) out of love for themselves. That is a violation of the Greatest Commandment, the Second Greatest Commandment, and all other commands as well. Human beings are to love God with all of their being and then out of that love for Him they are to love others.
The root and the heart of sin is the love of self and thinking well of self. The devil has brought that basic idea into the Church and in doing so has tricked and deceived human beings into thinking that Christianity is all about them. He has tricked human beings into thinking that God is all about them as well. This means that professing believers strut around thinking well of themselves not knowing that they have been deceived into this by the devil who has them in bondage to the very thing that they need to be saved from. To repeat, the very thing that sinners need to be saved from (self, love of self, pride) the devil has deceived them into thinking that this is what God saves them for. It is a stroke of deception, no doubt and one impossible to be saved from apart from the cross. At the cross is where Christ suffered and died out of love for the Father and His people. It stands against self-love and self-esteem and is in reality the only way to be delivered from the bondage of those things. We must love Christ, not self.
God Loves... Himself 
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