According to the classic definition, an “evangelical” is a person who believes in and acts upon the “gospel”—in New Testament Greek the euangelion. As understood by evangelicals, the gospel is a statement about the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross: by his “blood” he made atonement for the sins of all people. The gospel is a believable message because it has been communicated in the Bible, which is a body of universal, trustworthy, and authoritative truth revealed to humanity by God.

That gives us the concentric biblicist, Christocentrist, and crucicentrist spheres of evangelical theology: the Bible unerringly reveals to humanity Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God, who died for the sins of the world.