1 Thessalonians 4:3-4:
“ For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,”
This verses above are used to show God has a second will that fails to save the reprobate. The distinction in wills has historical routes in the Reformed faith but it is more a confusing linguistical tradition than anything else. I asked Steve Hays thoughts and he said this:
I doubt 1 Thes 4:3 is using God’s “will” in the rather recondite, specialized sense required by this debate. I expect that’s just a way of referring to Christian duty or morality. God’s “law”. Moreover, there’s the whole issue of anthropopathy in Scripture. Open theists appeal to representations of God changing his mind; expressing surprise, regret, or disappointment; exhibiting ignorance, flying off the handle. We have passages in which God is represented as a jilted lover or cuckold husband. That’s only literally possible on a pagan view of God, a la Zeus. So, I don’t put much stock in that kind of language.
As I’ve said before, if God can only instantiate a single timeline, then even an omnipotent God might genuinely regret the fate of the lost. But I have no reason to think God suffers from that restriction.
I think it falls into a Christian imperative rather than being some treatise about the will of God. I think everyone agrees this is to convey moral teachings to the Christians at Thessalonica:
Paul explains (gar, “for,” is explanatory here) one aspect of the “instructions” or commands he and his coworkers had given this church (4:2), that being: It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. This is just one dimension of God’s will (cf. 5:18), a point that is highlighted in the Greek by the absence of the definite article before the word will.22 Unlike Greek ethics, Jewish and Christian ethics were not organized around a collection of ideals or virtues but rather centered on “the will of God.”23 Here, as at a number of points in the NT, the “will of God” is God’s moral plan for human beings that should be both known and put into practice (Matt. 7:21; 12:50; 21:31; Mark 3:35; Luke 12:47; John 7:17; 9:31; Acts 13:22; Rom. 12:1–2; Eph. 6:6; Heb. 10:36; 13:21; 1 John 2:17). Doing this will is the counterpoint to being carried along by “passionate lust like the heathen” (4:5; 1 John 2:17), while positively it constitutes that which pleases God (4:1; Col. 1:9–10). The moral will of God for the church was laid out in the apostolic teaching the Thessalonians had received (4:1–2, 6b).
– Gene Green, PNTC.
Suggestions:
Triablogue:
TheCouncil:
The Council 