Various people have various definitions of the Gospel of Christianity. Most North American protestant evangelicals would define the Gospel as the story of the substitutionary atonement in the Cross through Jesus that allows for the forgiveness of sin guilt (propitiation) so that when believers die they can go to heaven (glorification). This isn’t wrong, it is just incredibly incomplete. Once again, this a typical Norther American protestant evangelical response to the question.
If we were to ask the Gospel writers, “What is the Gospels?” they would have quite a different answer. In sum, the Gospel according to the Gospel writers is the story of the fulfillment of God’s World Renewal Plan to restore His righteous reign over the creation through his human agent the Messiah. This is accomplished through substitutionary atonement. What I’m saying is that the thrust of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the thrust of salvation, is not the forgiveness of sins. The thrust of the Gospel, rather, is God’s reign restored on earth through the Messiah and the death and resurrection of the Messiah is the means for reaching that goal.
