My proposal is this. When Paul refers to 'the gospel', he is not referring to a system of salvation, though of course the gospel implies and contains this, nor even to the good news that there now is a way of salvation open to all, but rather to the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel's Messiah and the world's true Lord. 'The gospel' is not 'you can be save, and here's how'; the gospel, for Paul, is 'Jesus Christ is Lord'.
Justification is not 'how someone becomes a Christian'. It is God's declaration about the person who has just become a Christian.
The united multi-ethnic church is a sign of God's healing and remaking of the cosmos and also thereby a sign to Caesar and his followers that his attempted unification of the world is a blasphemous paradoy.
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