The gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God - the kingdom of God's new creation that He inaugurated through Jesus' triumph in death and resurrection. And so the crucial element in proclaiming the gospel is manifesting the new creation that has its substance in the resurrected Messiah and is present in the world in those who share in His resurrection life through the Spirit. This gospel of new creation in Christ must be the focus of the Church's witness in the world, and the very marrow of this testimony is cruciform sonship - lives that bear living witness to the meaning, purpose, and fruit of Jesus' cross.