'The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation' (Titus 2:11). God's grace is God in action through holy love to save us when we cannot save ourselves—from sin, evil and death, into God's favour, goodness and life.

Notions of easy or soft 'grace' infer that evil and sin are something that has happened to us as helpless victims, rather than what we have wilfully and culpably perpetrated in defiance of God. God's implacable opposition to all such evil requires that we see true saving grace in the light of God and His law and His wrath, of judgment and punishment, and the battle against the powers of Satan, the rebellious world-system, and our self-serving flesh. Our full reconciliation with God as He is has required nothing less than the giving of His Son, totally identified with us and substituted for us, to the final judgment of sinners and all sin and evil in the suffering and death of the cross, and to the victorious resurrection and eternal reigning, that we might live with Him.

Our living, loving and serving in this life now and in the age to come are no less governed and supplied by this redeeming grace-action of God. Jesus has come with the Father's glory, in the power of God's Spirit, 'full of grace and truth', and `from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace' (John 1:14, 16).