God Saves Sinners

                                                     "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves
                                                      full acceptance:
                             
                                                                       Christ Jesus came into the world
                                                                       to save sinners -- of whom I am
                                                                       the worst."
                                                                                             1 Timothy 1:15


                                 
                                                          ****************

          From In My Place Condemned He Stood:  Celebrating the Glory of Atonement,
     by J.I. Packer

                        "For to Calvinism (Reformed Theology) there is really only one point
     to be made in the field of 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
     (1 Peter 1:1-2).

                        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 (Ephesians 1:3-14).

                        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 (Romans 8:5-8).


                         GOD SAVES SINNERS - and the force of this confession may not be
     weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or 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 so as to allow him to share the praise
     of his salvation with his Savior.

                          This is the one point of Calvinistic (Reformed) soteriology that the 'five points'
     are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny:  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!"