also, deep pride in one area is usually a defense against deep insecurity in another area, both springing from not knowing (or deliberately avoiding) the truth about oneself.

“My dear Wormwood,
… You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue…. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love – a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”

I notice in myself that a big part of why I hate sinning is that it humbles me, shows me I’m not a righteous, self-sufficient wage-earner and reveals my desperate need for Jesus. So much of my hatred of sin is actually the flesh talking.

You can get the flesh to hate sin. And hate it a very great deal. But the flesh does not hate sin for the right reasons. The flesh hates sin because it leads to brokenness and dependency (or it ought to).

Therefore what can often sound like a very holy determination “never to sin again” is actually a determination never to need Jesus again, never to fall at His feet and confess our desperate depravity, never to have to plead His mercy. It can actually be code for ‘I never want to live by His grace, only by my righteousness.’
http://christthetruth.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/i-wish-i-never-sinned/