Piper on the Cross and Self-esteem

It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a warrant for self-esteem as the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy without turning that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of health but of bondage to self. The only ultimate love is the sacrificial act of God saving me to share God’s passion for the supremacy of God. Nothing glorifies him, or satisfies us, more.
-John Piper, “Taste and See,” pg. 45