The revivalistic emphasis can result in a neglect on bringing the Bible’s teaching about the life of faith and discipleship.
It is also possible to neglect the call to salvation through an unbalanced emphasis on practical aspects of Christian living.
A balance is obviously called for, especially because salvation without the Lordship of Jesus is licentiousness, while obedience without the foundation of the grace of the Gospel is legalism.
I think that we are sometimes apt to let our anxiety for the salvation of souls degenerate into a mere pity for the misery into which they may be brought by sin; and the result of such a low thought is that when we have been brought to believe that a soul is, as we say, “safe,” that it has been forgiven and will not be punished, we are satisfied. The thought of rescue has monopolised our religion and often crowed out he thought of culture. I think that ht tome of the New Testament is different from this. I know how eminently there the truths of danger and rescue always appear. I know that Christ “came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” and that He was called Jesus because He should “save his people from their sins.”
But all the time being the danger lies the value of that spiritual nature which is thus in peril. It is not solely or principally the suffering which the should must undergo; it is the loss of the soul itself, its failure to be the bright and wonderful thing which, as the should of god’s child, it ought to be. That is the reason why the process of salvation cannot stop with the removal of penalties and the forgiveness of sins. It must include all the gradual perfection of the soul by faith and love and obedience and patience.Phillips Brooks, The Joy Of Preaching, Kregel Classics, 1989, pg. 195.
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