There is some truth in these emphases: the gospel cannot be reduced to a message of political transformation. But then neither can it be “reduced” to a message of personal or ecclesial transformation. It would be wrong, for example, to suggest that the gospel is nothing more than a promise of deliverance from chemical addiction. But for many addicts the gospel of Jesus Christ is rightly experienced as a power that can release them from enslavement to alcohol and drugs. Similarly, there are human beings who desperately need to hear the gospel as an address to their situations of political or economic oppression. To say this is not to “reduce” the gospel to anything. It is to recognize that redemption has a cosmic scope, since it is God’s gracious response to the complex brokenness of a fallen creation. Isaac Watts was right: “He comes to make his blessings flow / far as the curse is found.”

Richard Mouw - from an article Word & World (Luther Seminary)