J. I. Paker has made the point that all the tenets of Calvinism--that faithfully biblical system of theology that joyfully embraces the rich, comforting, God exalting, self-abasing, Christ-honoring, scriptural message of the  sovereignty of God in salvation and all things--reduce to one overarching claim: "God saves sinners." Each of these words is important for understanding what the Bible teaches about salvation. First, God saves sinners. God, not man, saves. He does not make us potentially savable. He does not enable us to save ourselves. He saves. Third, God saves sinners.  He saves a multitude that no man can number out of a world of human beings who are dead in sin and in opposition to His kind and sovereign rule. He saves people who once hated Him, ignored Him, and resisted Him. In salvation, God does not help those who help themselves, because no sinner can help himself. We are not "basically good" and in a position to "get by with a little help" from God. We are "without hope save in his sovereign mercy." Packer concludes: "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 salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present, and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory forever." 

Steven J. Lawson.- Pillars Of Grace.