This confident, persevering hope of final salvation is one of the most necessary and important means for enabling a Christian to perform the duties of Christian obedience. There are some theologians who would represent performance of the duties of Christian obedience as the ground of the hope of  eternal life. These are not wise builders. They turn things upside down, and place the superstructure in the room of the foundation.

Till a man has, through the faith of the gospel, obtained the hope of eternal life he will never take a step in that path of filial obedience which is the only road to heaven, and the more he has of a well-grounded hope of eternal life, the more rapidly will he run along that road, the more easily will he master the difficulties, and surmount the obstacles which threaten to prevent his progress.

When by a lively hope the Christian is enable to feast on the clusters of the grapes of the promised land, which faith has furnished him with in the wilderness, he is disposed to say with Caleb, “It must be a good land; and seeing it is a good land, let us good up and possess it.”

What though hosts of spiritual enemies oppose our progress; what though the Jordan of death, that river over which there is not bridge, roll his waters deep and dark between us and the Canaan above, He who is infinite in power and in faithfulness hath promised to make us “more than conquerors,” and to bring us to, and make us reside forever in that good land.

John Brown on 1 Peter 1:13