I AM...I AM!

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was born, I am.”

John 8:58

We don’t like to think of Jesus as being controversial, yet when Scripture tells us he was a stumbling block to many that is exactly what he was.  Every “I Am” statement he made, took the Jewish people back in history to the time of their greatest deliverance (and it wasn’t the face of Charleton Heston they were seeing).  They were reminded of another who stood before a great king and answered an inquisition with these words, “I Am that I Am has sent me to you (Exodus 3:14).”  It’s one thing to hear those words from Moses, who claimed to be sent by I Am, but it was another to hear them spoken by Jesus who claimed he was THE I AM.  In their minds, this was blasphemy.  The only answer for blasphemy was death.  So, from the get-go the Sanhedrin looked for a way to accomplish just that.  What they didn’t realize was when they finally achieved their goal, they were judge, jury, and executioner of God…and, were literally robbed of fully understanding who the “I AM” really was.

The name of God that most reflected his nature is this one: YHWH (I AM).  Scholars of the day could not catch the full implication of the word's meaning.  Some believed it referred to the timelessness of God.  To others it reflected his self-sufficiency.  To yet others, it reflected the sum of all that God was.  Add to this, the fact that to the Jew, this name was completely sacred.  So sacred, they would not speak it.  So holy, that they even translated it differently in their writings, as Jehovah, or Yahweh.  So revered that when they wrote it in their sacred scrolls, tradition tells us that the scribe would stop and say, “I am writing the name Yahweh for the holiness of His name.”  If he made an error in writing it, he would have to destroy the entire papyrus on which he was writing.  (That’s a message in itself about how careless we are today when flippantly tossing around the name of God.)

However, since a person’s name was his character, this means that more than any other name, I Am that I Am, gives us a glimpse into God.  Here’s where understanding the importance of Jesus' “I Am” statements should ring the most clear.  When Jesus said, “I Am_________________” (fill in the blank), he was saying, “I am here to show you my Father unlike you have ever seen him.  I am here to show you God in the flesh.  You don’t have to hide yourself behind a rock, covering your face, and look at his backside.  You can gaze at his glory and not die.  You can have relationship with him…and LIVE (life abundantly)!”  What an opportunity!  It’s not one I want to miss.

As we see God the Father in the life of His Son, we also uncover more of the name of God that has bewildered theologians for centuries.  A bigger blessing is this: we can then understand that strong tower into which we can run, and find a place of security in our most insecure moments (Proverbs 18:10).