JEFF TURNER

Words have weight, and some words carry the weight of the entire universe. When Jesus stood in the midst of the Jewish leaders in John chapter 8 and said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” he was not being careless with his phrasing. He was making a claim so direct, so utterly unambiguous in its implications, that his listeners immediately reached for stones. They understood exactly what he meant.

To hear those words as a Jewish man or woman in first-century Jerusalem was to hear them against the backdrop of centuries of scripture. You would know Exodus chapter 3, where Moses at the burning bush asks God for his name, and God replies: “I am who I am.” You would know the repeated declarations in Isaiah where God says, “I am he.” The phrase carries the idea of self-existent, eternal, present-tense being, the God who simply is, without beginning, without end. That was the name, the signature of the divine identity.

And Jesus loved to use it. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He said, “I am the good shepherd.” He said, “I am the vine.” He said, “I am the light of the world.” Each of these declarations was more than a statement of function; it was a declaration of identity. He was consistently and deliberately placing himself within the category that belonged only to Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Lord of all creation.

To the religious leaders of his day, this was the ultimate blasphemy. It was worse than cursing God, worse than denying him, worse than any form of irreverence. And so they picked up stones.

But here is the thing: they were right that such a claim would be the most monstrous of blasphemies, if it were not true. The only way in which Jesus’s “I am” statements are not the ravings of a megalomaniac is if he is actually who he claimed to be. The evidence he offered them, his words, his works, his resurrection, his entire life, all of it points toward the same staggering conclusion: it was not blasphemy, because it was true.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.

John 1:1