Inventors like Dr. Otto Octavius are extremely creative. They can see things that don’t exist—yet—and bring them to life. They come up with solutions to problems and create things that make our lives better.
That is just what Otto Octavius intends to do: He wants to create a new form of renewable energy to better everyone’s lives. In order to manipulate the radioactive material used to create this energy field, Octavius develops a set of “smart arms.” These arms are connected to his brain so that he can control them with his thoughts. Remember, he intends to use his thoughts—his intelligence—for the good of others.
“Doctor,” asks a reporter witnessing the unveiling of the smart arms, “if the artificial intelligence in the arms is as advanced as you suggest, wouldn’t that make you vulnerable to them?”
“How right you are,” replies Otto. “Which is why I developed this inhibitor chip to protect my higher brain function. It means I maintain control of the arms, instead of them controlling me.”
But something goes wrong—terribly wrong. A spike in the energy field shorts out the inhibitor chip. The collapsing energy field sets off a catastrophic accident that ends with Otto’s wife, Rosie, dead, and the smart arms permanently fused to Octavius. No longer do the doctor’s thoughts control the arms; the arms control Otto’s thoughts. Thus is born the evil Doctor Octopus (“Doc Ock” to his friends).
Okay, so all this is science fiction. No one really has a set of smart arms controlling their thoughts, right? Right. But we often feel that something else is controlling us. Have you ever done something that was totally out of character for you? Or maybe you set off to say something encouraging but ended up harming another person with your words. Where is that inhibitor chip when we need it?
The apostle Paul asked the same question. He also felt out of control at times. He ended up doing wrong when he set out to do right, and said that he was helpless to stop doing what he knew he shouldn’t. He wrote to the Christians in Rome and told them just how he felt:
I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it. I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time (Romans 7:18-20, THE MESSAGE).
It sounds as if the smart arms of sin had taken control of Paul. Deep inside, he said, there was something wrong. He made up his mind to act one way, but his body reacted in a different way.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything, and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? (Romans 7:21-24, THE MESSAGE).
Paul was describing what happens when the inhibitor chip goes haywire. Octavius isn’t in control of the arms any longer; they are in charge of him: “Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.”
After the energy field explodes, destroying his lab and all of his equipment, Octavius returns with the four smart arms permanently attached to him and controlling his actions. He hears “something … in my head … something talking.” This “some-thing” tells him to rebuild the energy field and steal the money to make it happen. At first Otto rejects that idea. “I’m not a criminal,” he says.
But the arms intercede. They whisper in his ear. And Otto changes his tune. “That’s right,” he says. “The real crime would be to not finish what we started.”
Without the inhibitor chip, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t want to do more damage—he is no longer in charge. The smart arms have taken over his thoughts and his actions, just as sin had its way in Paul’s life. Just as sin has its way in our lives.
Paul cried out in anguish, “Who will set me free from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24, NASB). He could have been referring to an ancient practice where if you were to accidentally kill someone, you were made to wear the dead body strapped to yours for three days. The “body of death” would begin to rot and stink, and you wanted nothing less than to be rid of it. In the same way, Paul recognized that his old self, the “pre-Christian” Paul, was still part of him. But it was a dead way of life, stinking and rotting just like a corpse.
Who, indeed, could set him free? Paul offered the answer in verse 25:
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different (Romans 7:25, THE MESSAGE).
Jesus is our inhibitor chip. He keeps the smart arms of sin from being in control of us.
How should this look in our lives? Paul gave us an idea in the previous chapter of Romans:
From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you. God speaks your mother-tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin, and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands associated with your old way of life (Romans 6:11, THE MESSAGE).
We are dead to sin—the smart arms no longer have control over us. We don’t have to listen to what they say or do what they tell us to do. We are no longer slaves to the arms of sin. We are now living in freedom—free from the arms that held us down, and free to run in the abundance of life that God has for us.