This is the first of many posts in this series where I started to really dig into the question, who is Jesus? Many people know of Jesus, but few understand the depth of who He is. To some He is a myth and never existed. To others He existed but they only view Him as a great teacher. Fewer people recognize Him for who He is, who He claimed to be in scripture, the Son of God.
Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”
John 8:58
Context
To understand the significance of John 8:58, we need to step back a little and read John 8: 48-59 at a minimum. For full context and better picture of what is going on here, I recommend reading all of John 8. We must be careful in all our reading of scripture to never isolate a single verse while studying. Doing so runs the risk of twisting scripture and missing the author’s intent. We must understand the context around the verses in question.
In John 8, Jesus is teaching in the temple. He has the attention of the Jewish leaders(the scribes and Pharisees). The Jewish leaders do not trust Jesus. Over the course of Jesus’s life, they accuse Him of many things such as being a demon, a Samaritan, and blasphemer. In this latest exchange between Jesus and the leaders, the scribes and Pharisees are seeking to find something against Jesus. They begin this current round of questioning by asking Him if He has a demon. Jesus assures them He doesn’t and closes His answer with, “if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death” (John 8:51).
Hearing this, the leaders were more convinced He had a demon. The leaders started to reference Abraham and the prophets because they were viewed as keeping God’s word, yet they died. Here is Jesus, claiming to be God and if anyone knows Him, they would not see death. They did not understand that Jesus was not talking about preventing physical death, but giving them eternal life (John 3:16-17). So they ask Him another round of questions: is He greater than Abraham and the prophets; who does He think He is? In Jesus’s response to them, He told them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and that he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
This confused the Jewish leaders. Standing before them is a man in His 30s claiming to have been present when Abraham was alive. Jesus would have to be about 1800 years old to have been alive when Abraham was alive. To clear up the confusion, we get to Jesus’s big statement. “Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM’” (John 8:58).
Before Abraham was, I AM
Why is this statement so critical to who Jesus is? The Jews understood the statement “I AM” as a claim of deity. “I AM” was God’s covenantal name that God presented to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). God told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” which translates to the one who is/will be. It refers to God as the Eternal One, uncaused and independent.
Jesus did not simply claim that “I was”, which would suggest that He was born before Abraham. Jesus said, “before Abraham was, I AM”. The Jews were not confused about this claim. They knew immediately that Jesus claimed to His eternal existence and His deity with the words “I AM”. Upon hearing Jesus’s claim, the Jewish leaders took up stones to throw at Him. They viewed Him as a liar and a blasphemer.
References
If you would like to dig into more content around I AM, there is an amazing free resource called Precept Austin that is loaded with commentaries and sermons. Below are some links to the key verses from this post.