What exactly is the Gospel?

Tullian Tchividjian, Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, posts today on his blog a series of thoughts on the gospel, as related to him by Scotty Smith, the Founding Pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee. While in seminary, I was blessed to take a couple of courses Scotty taught, and he is a man who loves the gospel. I think that comes through clearly when he says:

• The gospel is God the Father’s irrepressible commitment to redeem his pan-national trans-generational family, and restore his broken creation through the person and work of Jesus, and the power and presence of his Holy Spirit
  
• The gospel is the glory-story of how God the Father is redeeming a people from every single race, tribe, tongue and people group for a life of worship service in the new heaven and new earth. All of this is being accomplished through the person and work of his Son, Jesus, and the power and presence of God the Holy Spirit.
  
• The gospel is the doxological drama in which Jesus, the second Adam, servant-Savior and loving Lord, is redeeming his pan-national Bride and making all things new, to the glory of God.
  
• The gospel is the unfolding story of God’s contra-conditional love for an ill-deserving people, and for his beloved and broken creation-a story which has Jesus as its hero, the nations as its characters, the world as its storyboard, and the new heaven and new earth as its goal.
  
• The gospel is like a great song: It has a lyric to be known (theology), a music to be loved (doxology) and a dance to be learned (mission). Indeed, the gospel calls for informed minds, en-flamed hearts and engaged feet.
  
• The gospel is God’s passionate, joyful, covenant commitment to make all things new through the person and work of his Son, Jesus, and by the power and presence of His Holy Spirit. “All things” include both a people and a place-the Bride of Christ, and the new heaven and new earth. We dare not emphasize one of these to the exception of the other.

The only thing I would add to Scotty's great reflections is to explicitly state what I think he implicitly is saying when he refers to "the person of work of Jesus," namely, "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred..." (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).