According to Genesis, the curse resulting from the fall of humanity is all-encompassing. The breach between humans and God (both judicial and relational) bled into blame-shifting toward one another. The earth, crying out against human violence and death, yields its produce grudgingly, groaning for release from its involuntary captivity. And, launching the story behind all stories in the Bible, the war of the Serpent’s surrogates (evident as soon as Cain) and the woman’s offspring (Abel) ensues. No longer holy, endowed with a holy calling, living in a holy land with God in peace and safety, the royal family lives “east of Eden.”

At the same time as he announces the curse, God issues a surprising announcement of a promised redemption and institutes a regime of common grace as space for this gracious pledge to be realized in history. For example, when God elects Abraham and Sarah out of sheer grace as the parents of a chosen nation, the promise continues with a typological family (ethnic descendants) and ultimately with the unilateral and unconditional announcement of a single offspring in whom all peoples will find a sufficient Mediator. From Sarah’s fallow womb, the promised offspring of Eve appears.

Reformation theology has always been eager to affirm that the nature created by God remains good yet corrupted; depravity is total in its extensiveness (heart, intellect, will, and body), not in intensiveness (as if God’s image could be eradicated). There’s no safe landing for Christ when he comes in gracious redemption. Without the new birth, no part of the world or the human self welcomes him. Yet, as expounded by the Calvinist Isaac Watts in the hymn “Joy to the World,” the remedy reaches “far as the curse is found.” Therefore, it’s reductive to define the gospel simply as the solution to one of these problems. Nevertheless, Reformed theologians affirm justification as the basis for believers’ sanctification and glorification.

Scripture’s Storyline

Christ himself is the solution to the curse’s extensiveness. He’s the incarnate gospel. Jesus said he was the unifying feature of Holy Scripture (Luke 24:27; John 5:39). Irenaeus is quoted as saying that Scripture’s coherence lies in “Christ, the mosaic,” in which each piece has its particular redemptive-historical place.

Christ himself is the solution to the curse’s extensiveness. He’s the incarnate gospel.

The Protestant reformers and their confessional heirs said that the scope of Scripture is Christ as he’s clothed in his gospel. There are, of course, other topics, genres, supporting actors, and subplots, but all are subservient to this single message that grows clearer as the story unfolds. Thus, there can’t be many gospels but only one, albeit with many facets.

The good news is as encompassing as the bad news—it’s even more so, since it doesn’t announce a mere return to a pristine condition. Rather, it announces a future consummated condition that’s never been experienced by any mortal except for our exalted brother, Jesus (1 Cor. 2:9; Heb. 2:8–9).

Expounded in narrative, poetry, apocalyptic, wisdom, and didactic literature, Scripture’s unfolding drama has given rise to distinct disciplines for its interpretation, including biblical studies, biblical theology, and systematic theology. This is the proper order of interpretation, as the varied biblical texts evidence a coherent historical plot whose implications can be articulated with logical interconnections.

Like a topographical map, biblical theology displays the peaks and valleys along with the streams that flow into the mighty river that leads to Christ. More like a street map, systematic theology exhibits the inner connections of all the blessings we have in Christ. Some of the tensions in defining the gospel no doubt turn on whether one privileges the former (e.g., the story of Israel) or the latter (e.g., the “plan of salvation”). However, these should be seen as integrally related.

The drama in Scripture’s storyline is the source of the doctrine, which leads to doxology and discipleship. From the drama we learn, for example, that Christ was crucified, buried, and raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3–4). Yet it’s the doctrine that announces its significance for us: “[He] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). I suppose that if I had to summarize the gospel in a sentence, I couldn’t find a better one than that. We may enter the gospel mansion by many doors, but only with the confidence that justification secures us before a holy God can these other entrances be safe passages rather than a bewildering and fearful maze.

Good News of Justification

Just as there are many narrative subplots supporting one unfolding drama, there are many doctrines that indicate the lavish grace that the Father has displayed toward us in Christ and by his Spirit. However, apart from the justification of the ungodly, even the most majestic facets become condemning law for me as a sinner.

The sovereign God who elects, showing mercy to whom he will, can only be terrifying apart from the assurance that I’m justified through faith in Christ alone. Christ’s return in glory can only be an anxiety-provoking prospect when Jesus himself tells me he’ll separate the sheep from the goats in final judgment.

What good news could it be to me that the Spirit gradually conforms me to Christ’s image when I know that this good work begun in me won’t be perfect in this life? Apart from the certainty that I’m already declared righteous before God, that the throne of judgment has become for me a throne of grace, sanctification threatens with the ominous declaration that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

The drama in Scripture’s storyline is the source of the doctrine, which leads to doxology and discipleship.

A mere cross-centered theology can’t account sufficiently for the salvific import of the Word’s assumption of our nature. Yet the incarnation by itself doesn’t remove the obstacle to fellowship with God. We also need the resurrection and ascension. The resurrection not only proves Jesus’s divinity but is a further moment of his saving work. Moreover, the ascension of Christ isn’t merely an exclamation point to the resurrection but is another stage in his accomplishment of redemption. Through all these events in Christ’s life, those who are united to him are forgiven, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

Consequently, the gospel can’t be reduced to justification. Yet apart from this fact—our guilt imputed to Christ and his righteousness imputed to us—there’s no good news. When the justified hear the rest of the good news, they rejoice, but when these other blessings are meant to replace the problem of objective guilt before God, they become another gospel altogether.

Christ is victor over the evil powers, to be sure, but the ground of his triumph was canceling the legal record of debt by nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14–15). Jesus came to destroy death, but how? Death isn’t ultimately in the hands of Satan and his minions. It’s a legal sentence imposed by God for our treason. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:56). When the charges are canceled, so is the sentence—the Devil has no legal grounds to keep us in the grave (v. 57). That’s good news.