For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
Galatians 5:5
Therefore when I take hold of Christ as I have been taught by faith in the Word of God, and when I believe in Him with the full confidence of my heart--something that cannot happen without the will--then I am righteous through this knowledge. When I have been thus justified by faith or by this knowledge, then immediately the devil comes and exerts himself to extinguish my faith with his tricks, his lies, errors and heresies, violence, tyranny, and murder.
Then my battling hope grasps what faith has commanded; it becomes vigorous and conquers the devil, who attacks faith. When he has been conquered, there follow peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Faith and hope are scarcely distinguishable; and yet there is some difference between them.
Therefore faith is like a dialectic, which conceives the idea of all the things that are to be believed; and hope like rhetoric, which develops, urges, persuades, and exhorts to steadiness, so that faith does not collapse in temptation but keeps the Word and holds firmly to it.
Luther's Works 27:23-24
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