Mature self-love is a necessary link in the circuit of love that begins with God and flows to family, friends, neighbors, and enemies. Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself assumes it, and Philippians 2:3 does not make valuing others above oneself equivalent to despising oneself, since true humility is compatible with healthy self-esteem. Satan has pushed people from selfishness and narcissism to the opposite extreme of self-hatred, so that they avoid godly self-love. The opposite of selfishness is not self-hatred but loving oneself as a responsible, caring parent loves a growing child. Entitlement, victimhood, and self-indulgence are not self-love but self-destruction. Self-love starts with grasping how deeply God loves and values each person, as David did in Psalm 139, and with a firm connection to the heavenly Father, who makes up for deficits in a person's upbringing. Since no one is perfect and no one chose his parents, each person must take charge as a responsible adult, and if necessary parent himself. Before a person can esteem, serve, or love others, or be a good spouse or parent, he must learn to esteem, love, and parent himself, as the oxygen-mask instruction illustrates. The absence of self-love contributes to failed marriages. The childish traits that 1 Corinthians 13 lists, such as jealousy, boasting, and touchiness, must be replaced by adult maturity. God's Word teaches this self-parenting through stewardship of health, family, finances, and spiritual gifts, patience, wise choice of friends, control of anger and fear, and the joy of giving. Showing oneself the compassion of Psalm 103:13 carries the circuit of love on to others.

Self-love, in the sense of putting oneself ahead of God, is what derailed Job. Though blameless and upright in keeping the law, he developed an inward-turning attitude problem during his suffering. Jesus' second great commandment, to love one's neighbor as oneself, presupposes the first: love of God must come first, expressed in pleasing and glorifying Him, and only then love toward people and concern for oneself. Job reversed this order. Fixated on his own pain and righteousness, he demanded that God account for Himself, accused Him of cruelty, and in effect treated God as an equal. Elihu named the root problem as vanity and self-righteousness, justifying himself rather than God, and thinking too much of himself and too little of God. Everyone tends to fall into this because people are stuck with themselves and want their problems solved immediately. In practice, the first question in any situation should be how it can glorify God, and only afterward how it affects oneself. God cured Job's self-importance by appearing in a whirlwind and showing his insignificance, until Job abhorred himself and repented, shifting his focus from himself to God. The remedy is being "poor in spirit," as Jesus taught in the first Beatitude: acknowledging that one knows only in part, cannot save oneself, and needs Christ for every step.

The self-help, self-love movement, popularized by secular humanism, teaches that we must first learn to love ourselves before we can give and accept love. It encourages people to let go of inhibitions and put their own aspirations ahead of others. In doing so it reverses the direction true love moves, which by definition is outward, and replaces it with "to thine own self be true." Followed to its logical conclusion, this restricts love to whatever indulges the carnal nature and the wickedly deceptive heart (Romans 8:7; Jeremiah 17:9), until love for self trumps everything, including love for God. Satan has worked for many years to place this conclusion in human hearts. Love then ceases to be a selfless, outgoing, unifying attribute that defines God's nature and becomes a selfish, introverted, destructive force. It prevents a person from ever knowing or loving God or others as He commands. With self-love dominating, God cannot complete His work of re-creating us in His image, and the final steps of sanctification come to nothing. Countering this deception requires reading, studying, and working to comprehend God's Word, and resisting Satan's attempts to redefine the nature of a loving God.

Self-love appears in the form of pride, defined as an undue sense of one's own superiority, importance, or worth, an inordinate and undeserved self-esteem. Its synonyms are self-esteem, conceit, vanity, and vainglory, and its antonyms are humility and modesty. Pride gathers strength in a perverted comparison, as if a person becomes intoxicated with admiration for what he deems worthy in himself. Satan is the pattern: his love affair with his intellect, authority, and beauty (Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14) made him feel superior, and he wanted to rule instead of serve. Self-esteem shows itself as deference to one's own opinions, conceit as an exaggerated view of one's worth, vanity as a craving for admiration, and vainglory as boasting.