God...Saves...Sinners

For of Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field soteriology: the
point that God saves sinners.
God—the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons
working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen
people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing
the purpose of Father and Son by renewing.
Saves—does everything, first to last, that is involved
in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption,
calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies.
Sinners—men as God finds them, guilty, vile,
helpless, powerless, blind, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot. God
saves sinners—and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of
the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and
making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner’s inability as to allow him to
share the praise of his salvation with his Savior. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology
which the ‘five points’ are concerned to establish ...
namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last,
whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen!

--Jim Packer