Despite Paul having some theology of “predestination,”
Nevertheless, throughout his
letters Paul calls for faith on the part of human beings to appropriate God’s
salvation in Christ and to stand in the Lord, rendering the “obedience of faith”
to the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1:5; 10:16; 16:26; 2 Cor 9:13; cf. also 2 Thess
1:8 . . .)
. . .
Just as God’s predestination does
not make humans mere robots, so also it does not deny the possibility of Christians
losing salvation through lack of vigilance (cf., e.g., Rom 11:17-22; 1 Cor
6:9-10; 10:12; Gal 5:21). . . . if there is no possibility of apostatizing
believers ending up with God’s wrath at the last judgment, Paul would not warn
of it in our passage of 1 Thess 5:2-9 or worry about the readers being tempted
away from the faith by the satanic forces, making his apostolic labor in vain
(3:1-5).
Compare, for example, 1 Cor 1:7-9
with 3:16-17; 6:9-10; 9:24-27 and 10:12 to see how within one and the same
letter Paul speaks of God’s election of the Corinthian believers and his
faithful preservation of them to the end (the perseverance of the saints), only
to warn them sternly of their fall from salvation through their failure to live
a holy and righteous life. Note again how within the one and same chapter of
Rom 8 Paul warns the Roman Christians of their fall from eternal life if they
live according to the flesh, shunning the leading of the Spirit (v. 13), only
to speak of God’s predestination and preservation of them from eschatological salvation
(vv. 28-39). In 1 Cor 10:12-13, a similar combination of warning of a possible
fall and assurance of God’s faithful preservation are expressed with two
sentences (cf. Phil 2:12-13; 1 Thess 5:21-22). Our verse (1 Thess 5:9) is the
same as these examples, the only distinction being that it is withing on verse
or one sentence that both truths of divine predestination/preservation of
saints and of warning of fall are so compactly stated, or, to be more precise, the
latter is stated within the structure of the former . . . (Seyoon Kim and F. F.
Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians [2d ed.; Word Biblical Commentary 45;
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2023], 449-50)
