God's Decisions and Ours

"Romans 9 teaches the absolute sovereignty of God in the decisions he makes about the ultimate fate of human beings. That teaching naturally raises questions in our minds. As we have seen, Paul does not really try to answer these questions - at least from our perspective. For him it is enough to know that God has revealed himself as the one who determines these matters. We have no right to stand in judgment of what God does. We can judge him only by the standard of his own revelation, and by that standard, God certainly is "just." 

Nevertheless, Paul plainly believes in the reality of human decisions. We are not puppets or robots. Our decisions matter, and we are responsible to make the right ones - to accept Christ, to live holy lives, to love one another, and so forth. How can our decisions really matter if God decides everything? Theologians and philosophers have debated this issue for centuries. They have discovered no neat logical solution to the problem. We must be willing at this point to live with what we call an "antinomy," an unresolved tension between two clear truths. God determines what happens; I am responsible for what happens. Scripture teaches both, and therefore I am compelled to believe both, even if ultimately I can't explain their relationship. Many who have written on this topic use the term "compatibilism" for this general viewpoint. The term refers to the belief that absolute sovereignty and genuine responsibility are not contradictory but "compatible" with one another. I think this comes closest to the teaching of Paul in Romans and to the witness of the Bible in general."- Encountering the book of Romans by Douglas J. Moo (Page 152)