What is the gospel in the Bible?

The English word derives from a Middle English riff (godspell) on a Latin derivative of the Greek evangelium, which means "good news." Godspell was the combination of god (good) and spell (tale). In the New Testament there are four individual gospel books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Together, however, they narrate the one gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth and how through his ministry, teaching, preaching, miracles, death, and resurrection he brought about a forgiveness of sin and the end of death. The gospel proclaims the coming of the kingdom of God, and it announces that entrance into this kingdom is by grace alone through faith alone when in baptism we receive union with Christ and so eternal life through him. Already in the book of Acts, in the earliest preaching of the church, and then on into the epistles of Paul and others, "the gospel" was shorthand for the whole content of the sermons presented by the Apostles. Probably no single verse captures this better than what Paul wrote in Romans 1:16: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."