What is the gospel? It seems a simple question, yet it has been known to provoke heated responses even inside the church. How are we to arrive at a clear, biblical understanding of it? Tradition, reason and experience all leave us finally disappointed, Greg Gilbert argues; if we want an answer we must turn to the Word of God, and he does so here, working chiefly from the opening chapters of Romans.

The structure is God, man, Christ, response - the four pieces Gilbert contends any faithful presentation must hold together - and he is specific about what goes wrong when one is dropped. Short enough to read in a sitting and cheap enough to buy by the box, which is how many churches use it: for membership classes, for new believers, and for anyone who has been in church for years without being able to state the gospel plainly.