3. The visible gospel kingdom: the professing sphere in time, with its ranks, rewards, and losses

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

Here is the register the attainment system most disastrously misreads. The "kingdom of heaven" of Matthew's parables is repeatedly a mixed, temporal, visible sphere: a field of wheat and tares growing together (Matthew 13:24-30), a net enclosing good fish and bad (13:47-48), ten virgins wise and foolish, a marriage feast with a gate-crasher. Men are "in" this kingdom by profession who were never in the kingdom of register 2 by birth, that is the whole point of the tares. Within this visible sphere there are genuine gradations: one may be "least in the kingdom of heaven" or "great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:19) according to faithfulness in doctrine and practice, and note carefully: the least is still in the kingdom. Rank in usefulness, honor, and reward in the gospel sphere is real and conditional; standing in the family is neither. Here also belong the "worthy" texts (Luke 20:35; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; Revelation 3:4), worthiness vocabulary in Scripture attaches to fitness for service, suffering, and honor in the visible kingdom, never to the purchase of the inheritance, which is by blood (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Once this register is seen, the attainment system's entire method is exposed: it harvests every conditional, graded, effort-laden statement that belongs to the visible kingdom in time, enter, strive, press, attain, be counted worthy, least and greatest, prize and crown, and re-addresses the whole file to eternity. The result is a permanent hierarchy in glory built out of verses about discipleship on earth. The distinction between time salvation and eternal salvation is simply the honest work of sorting that mail back into the right boxes.