The gospel summarized in but part of one verse? You betcha!

If I had to choose a single verse that best represents the gospel, it would not be John 3:16. John 3:16 is, no doubt, a beautiful promise of eternity. But to me, stand-alone, it does not  capture the hopelessness of those who are beneficiaries  of the gospel, nor the requisite amazing grace. Standing alone, it could be (and often is) incorrectly understood as salvation by mustering up from within a sufficient, self-created intellectual assent to the simple fact of the existence of Jesus as the son of  God.

I much prefer, for the arbitrary and ad hoc requirement of encapsulating the essence of the gospel as succinctly as possible, 1 Tim 1:15:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners

The rest of the verse is Paul, incredulously to many of us, accepting the title of the chief of the sinners.

Look at this (partial)  verse. Salvation is there. Moral failing is there. And grace abounds there. The gospel is there. All crammed in to that single (first part) of a single verse.

We love to hold our Lord in high esteem because of this: he was a friend of sinners. We view “friend of sinners” as one of the most positive character traits of Jesus. But we should remember that when the description was first applied to Jesus, it was used as an insult. We read what the Pharisees and scribes had to say, as related by Jesus:

³⁴ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ (Luke 7:34)

It is quite possible that what truly incensed the Pharisees was not that Jesus tolerated sinners. To tolerate them, and to console them, and to give them hope in salvation was probably acceptable. No, it wasn’t that Jesus tolerated sinners that made him an object of  derision in the eyes of the Pharisees. In calling Jesus a "friend of sinners," they were complaining that Jesus seemed to prefer the company of such people over the company of the “righteous.” 

That stuck in their craws.