Radical

Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." John 8:58

If you started to make a list of the "I am's" out of the book of John, this one seems to be the most radical.

Think about it, what would you think if the person standing in front of you right now claimed to be God? Not a god, not god like, but the One and only true God.

You would think they were crazy, probably.

Not only is Jesus claiming to have been alive 2,000 years prior, but He was the great I AM.

When Jesus says "I am" He is using the most personal name for God in the Scriptures; "Ego eimi" in Greek, YHWH in Hebrew. One of the places we find Yahweh (it appears over 6,800 times in the OT) is this passage out Exodus; God has commanded Moses to lead the people of Israel out of captivity and Moses wants to tell them God's name.

Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"  God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'" Ex 3:13-14

"I AM WHO I AM" has been studied, examined, picked apart for centuries and the result, well let's just say it's inconclusive. I personally like what a Dutch scholar named Vriezen suggested; "I AM WHO I AM' means, 'I am there, wherever it may be…I am really there!"

I AM is the uncreated one, who does not change, who is everlasting, who is all powerful, who cannot grow faint or weary, who is infinite, who is simply who He is and not who we make Him out to be.

Christ is He.

The Trinity is where I believe the church will come under the most attack in the days ahead. We live in a culture that says that all gods are the same, where the fastest growing religions deny the co-existence of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. This statement will bring about anger in some in the days ahead; it did so when Jesus declared it.

At this, they picked up stones to stone him… Romans 8:59