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Scotty Smith accepts Tullian Tchividjian’s request for some thoughts on the question: What Is The Gospel?:

• 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.

Dane Ortlund, writing at The Gospel Coalition, voices appreciation for the numerous contemporary “books, blogs and movements” who have been calling for the Gospel to receive primary emphasis.
He also notes that:

In more recent days, though, some are raising the question of whether this is getting a bit out of hand, asking whether we can emphasize the gospel to the exclusion of other things, and, perhaps most of all, simply expressing a general cynicism about the current trendiness of being gospel-centered (whatever “gospel-centered” means — I use the phrase here to refer to viewing the gospel not as something beyond which Christians graduate but which rather remains the heartbeat of life, to be not only confessed doctrinally and evangelistically but also appropriated emotionally and psychologically, the non-negotiable of all non-negotiables, summed up best biblically in 1 Cor 15:3-4).

Read the rest of Ortlund’s thoughts on this contention here.