Doctrine
How God brings sinners to Christ and keeps them.
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The Doctrines of Grace
These five points were never meant to be the whole of the faith. They are an answer to a specific question. When God saves a sinner, who does the saving?
Read them as one sentence about one God working one salvation. Taken apart they can sound cold. Taken together they are a deep comfort, because they mean your salvation does not finally rest on how tightly you hold on.
Sin has touched every part of us, mind and will and affections, so that no one seeks God on his own. The word total is about extent, not degree. No part of us is clean enough to save the rest. Paul lays this out in Romans 3, and Ephesians 2 calls us dead in trespasses.
Before the foundation of the world God set his love on a people in Christ. The choice was not made because he looked down the corridors of time and saw who would choose him. It rested on the good pleasure of his will. Paul defends it at length in Romans 9, including the objections it raises.
Christ did not die to make salvation merely possible. He died to actually save particular people, and he will not lose them. His death is of infinite worth, and Christ is freely offered in the gospel to every sinner who hears, but its saving design and effect are for his sheep.
Alongside the outward call of the gospel to all, the Spirit gives an inward call that raises the dead. Ezekiel 36 promised it, and the new birth is where God makes good on the promise. New life comes first, and then the sinner comes willingly, because he has been made willing.
Those truly united to Christ will be kept to the end. They may fall badly and grieve the Spirit, but they will be brought back. This is not a promise that a prayer you once prayed guarantees heaven. It is a promise that what God began in you he will bring to completion, as Philippians 1:6 says.
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
John 10:11 (KJV)
He does not say he makes a sheepfold available. He lays down his life for the sheep, and he gets them.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
John 6:37 (KJV)
Both halves of that verse are yours to hold. The first half tells you election works. The second half tells you the door is open, right now, to you. If you are worried about whether you are chosen, stop looking inward and come to Christ. Nobody who comes is turned away.
For a fuller answer to the views these points were written against, see How to Answer Arminianism and Pelagianism.