Thankful Thursday - God Saves Sinners

I am thankful that God saves sinners.

At small group last night, we discussed the sermon on Romans 8:1-4 and delved into election and the role of the Trinity in our salvation. For some of us, Shai Linne's Mission Accomplished came immediately to mind. When I got home, I listened to Shai's song and picked up John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.  Here's a section from J.I. Packer's introduction. Read it and worship our Triune God:

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 brining man form 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, 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-pedalling the sinner's inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which 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.

The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, John Owen, introduction by J.I. Packer, Banner of Truth Trust, 2007, pg.6.