Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” John 8:58 KJV
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” John 8:58 NASB
From the earliest days in Sunday School, most of us learned the seven “I am” statements of the Gospel of John. Beginning with “I am the Bread of life” (John 6) – all the way through to “I am the Vine” in John 15. These titles reveal the fullness that can be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He meets every need we have as sinners and as saints; He occupies every office to secure our blessing. He is food in our hunger, drink in our thirst, and a Shepherd in our neediness. He promises and procures not only eternal life now but resurrection life in a day to come.
In the seven “I am” statements, He reveals what He is for us. But there are also seven “I am” statements, standing alone without a descriptive following. These tell us what He is in Himself. Certainly, the Jews understood that He was claiming absolute deity. That is why they took up stones to put Him to death. He was employing the same title that Jehovah used when He revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush. It was a title that caused Moses to remove his shoes and to recognize a distance to which he must adhere (Ex 3:5, 14).
The Lord repeated these words when the motley crowd came to apprehend Him in the garden. His majestic “I am” caused them to go backward and fall upon their faces – a preview of a coming day when all will bow before Him. The scene is given to us in John alone to remind us that everything was under the Lord’s control. They could not have taken Him had He not willingly offered Himself.
He Is the “I am,” the eternal ever-existing Jehovah revealed throughout the Old Testament but now seen in the lowly Man of Sorrows. He forfeited nothing of His eternal deity when He took humanity into union with Himself. Standing before men with stones in their hands, He was a real man but also the “I am” of eternity.
Come with me now to another scene. Once again, He will employ the familiar “I am,” but this time, He does add a description to it. “I am … a worm and no man” (Ps 22:6). The Jehovah Who revealed Himself in glory to Moses, in Holy Majesty to Isaiah, and as the God of Glory to Abraham (Acts 7:2) allowed Himself to be valued by men as a worm, a “no man,” someone not even possessing the value of a man.
Cull together all the opinions men held about the Saviour. He was content to leave earth having been judged by men to be either an impostor, a demon-possessed miracle worker, a fraud, a blasphemer, a perverter of the people, a transgressor, or now a worm. He was content to leave His vindication and justification with His Father.
To think that the “I am” became a worm for me is overwhelming.
Consider:
There are at least seven occasions in John’s Gospel when the Lord Jesus employs the “I am” statement with no description following. I have highlighted two of them in the writing above. Can you find some of the others? At times, in the KJV/AV, it may read, “I am He,” but the word “he” is in italics, showing that it does not belong in the original.
