Your experience of hope in Jesus does not hang in the balance of your conduct. Your hope in Jesus is because of Jesus.
The enemy of this experience is the chorus of voices that says, “Your hope in Jesus hangs in the balance of your conduct.” The New Testament calls these voices the flesh, the world, and the devil, and these are the voices that dominate the church today.
The same is true of our “obtaining the promise” — any promise of God. Whether you do or not does not hang in the balance of your obedience to God. Anyone’s experience of “obtaining the promise” — saint and sinner alike — does not depend on their obedience to God; it depends on God.
When the church teaches otherwise, it creates self-righteous hypocrites, and through that hypocrisy, the name of God is blasphemed because of the Christian/Catholic church.