What is the gospel, really?

Darryl Dash has been reading Ron Martoia's Static and thinking about what the gospel really is. Darryl makes a case for continuing to ask, "What is the gospel?"

. . . Paul gives over fifty gospels in a nutshell. If the gospel is that rich and layered, encompasses the whole biblical story, then it makes sense to spend a bit of time making sure we haven't settled for a truncated version.

In a culture too prone to reduce it to a tidy formula for salvation, it's good to see Christians suggesting we take time to know the fullness of the good news. In a follow-up post, Darryl shares some of the insights from Static:

Ron suggests something that, in theory, most evangelicals should agree with: that we should let the Bible define the gospel. The problem is that we have been taught things about the gospel that are extrabiblical, but we're not always aware of this. Words like gospel and repentance start to carry extrabiblical meanings, which we read back into the biblical text.

So if that's the problem, what's the solution? Darryl, and Ron Martoia, offer some ideas. I will, too: go directly to the Word, and let it do its work on us.

Update: Mike Russell has more at Eternal Perspectives.