What is The Gospel Really?

It has occurred to me recently in reading many online christian blogs that the term "the gospel" is thrown around a lot. Here are just a few of some topics being discussed:

"Live for the gospel"
"Contend for the gospel"
"Being gospel-centered"
"Gospel intentionality"
"Having gospel-centered community"
"Gospel and method"
Gospel "this and that"


I hope we haven't strayed into thinking that the gospel needs something else to go with it.
i.e. "gospel AND community" or "gospel AND method" Rather, those should be understood as "gospel through community" or "gospel by method[s]"

It got me to thinking. I read ABOUT "the gospel" a lot. Almost everyday. It got me to thinking, "What is the gospel really?" This may sound scary for a church boy to be saying but it seems to me that we are talking a lot about the gospel but neglecting to really tell the gospel. It feels like I hear "Preach the gospel!" more than I hear the gospel preached.

It's the same as when people proclaim the inerrency of scripture while neglecting to procliam its sufficiency. We have so many people pushing inerrency, inerrency, inerrency while neglecting to tell us why the scriptures are sufficient for us in both our joy and suffering. Just like we must emphasize inerrency with sufficiency, we must also actually tell what the gospel is in addition to our many blogs, sermons, and books.

This bugged me enough to search out anybody actually telling what the gospel really is, plain and simple, and why it's important rather than just talking about it. I looked high and low and finally found what I was looking for in a John Piper interview on, ironically enough, the Gospel Coalition website. (Once again, thank you Piper)

In it he tells what he sees as the essentials of what the gospel really is.

Here is the link. I think it is very important to watch...

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/resources/video/What-Is-The-Gospel---John-Piper#