Radical I AM

And He was saying to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 'Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am (He), you will die in your sins." (John 8:23-24)

During this intensifying exchange with the Jewish leaders Jesus divulged rather clearly His claims to absolute divinity more than in most of His teachings. In these verses He clearly contrasts Himself with those He was speaking to declaring plainly that He was not like them and His origin was radically different than theirs. He goes on to claim the greatest name ever pronounced identifying Himself as the great I AM who appeared to Moses. As these Jews who claimed to revere Moses became more and more hostile and resistant to what Jesus was claiming about Himself, it still did not cause Him to soften His assertions but rather He kept stating them more openly and clearly until His listeners were finally so incensed about His apparent blasphemy that they tried to stone Him to death.

Jesus is speaking here of the two realities that we all must at some point encounter and make our own choices about. We have all been born in sin, born into the counterfeit reality system that has trained us largely to view things from an earthly rationale. Through no fault of our own we are stuck with the handicap of only being able to view life from this perspective until we begin to respond to the offer of Jesus to give us new eyes to see things radically different and in the process be transformed into the true reality. But unless we do make that choice and continue to make it we are destined to die in sin; for sin is terminal and all the counterfeit interpretations and systems connected with it are also doomed to failure. Only by moving over to living in the reality revealed by Jesus and living under His governance and dwelling in Him can we live for real without fear of death.

This verse brings me right back to the central theme of belief that is all throughout the book of John. Jesus says here that unless I believe that He is the great I AM that it will be impossible for me to experience true life. I have noticed that this claim of the I AM seems to appear several times in this passage and climaxes at the end of the chapter when the Jews finally are driven to try to stone Jesus to death for making such a claim. These words of Jesus are polarizing, both to those in the times when He walked this earth and to us today. We cannot be honest and yet gloss over the strong, emphatic claims of Jesus as to His true identity and the relationship that we must have with Him in our heart and mind if we desire to follow Him.

I personally have to grapple with the much deeper implications of this idea of the I AM. I have heard this discussed over the years and have been impressed with some who seem to have a better understanding of what this really means than most. But I must continue to immerse myself deeper into the real meaning of this name and how it relates to me personally. It is very helpful to go back to the original appearance of this term in God's conversation with Moses when He identified Himself as the I AM who was sending Moses back to Egypt to facilitate their rescue by God's mighty hand. All that was involved in that story and the ensuing events are implicated in this title of the I AM.

This name of God was one of the most revered names in the Jewish religion of Jesus' day. So when Jesus claimed this most sacred title in front of these religious leaders of God's chosen people they predictably reacted quite violently. They were unlikely to do otherwise unless they were willing to radically alter their assumptions about God and about their own religious traditions which, they were not willing to do. Jesus had come from God to reveal the real truth about what God was like and by contrast how religion had become so mistaken in how it was presenting God to the world. But the message and atmosphere that Jesus brought from heaven was foreign to religion and those steeped in its traditions, so much so that they found His life and teachings completely incompatible with their beliefs. Therefore they refused to accept His claims as God's true representative and instead clung to their traditions. But in doing so it caused them to feel scandalized by the claims and attitudes of Jesus and they felt compelled, from their perspective of what God was like, to eliminate Him by force.