I agree that imputation is an important part of how this tree grows and flourishes, and I agree that N.T. Wright gums up this doctrine. I believe he is wrong at this point, and his Reformed critics are right. But this is not enough to get me yelling for his scalp because on other aspects of the gospel, he is right and many of his Reformed critics are wrong. We make a great deal (as we should) about how Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. But what was it, exactly, that Abraham believed? It was that his seed would be like the stars in their multitudinous glory, and Paul interprets this as meaning Abraham was going to inherit the world — not through the law but through the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13). N.T. Wright believes this to be true, just like Abraham did, and (I really hesitate to say this, honestly) his amillennial Reformed critics do not believe it. This proclamation to Abraham was a proclamation of the gospel, and many within the Reformed camp do not believe it.
Paul doesn’t just write this way in Romans 4.13. Galatians 3.8 shows Paul saying something extraordinarily similar:
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
The content of the Gospel preached to Abraham, which he believed, was “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
What follows in Galatians Three is not a contrast between condisional and unconditional promises, but the content of the Law which specifies one nation and the content of the promise which specifies all nations.
And that is also the Gospel according to Ephesians 3