The Great I Am

Last week, I mentioned that the idea of referring to God as “I Exist” dates back to Moses. God told Moses, “I AM that I AM” and went on to instruct Moses to tell Pharaoh and the Israelites that “I Am” had sent him. Of course, grammatically, referring to God as “I Am” offered up some interesting linguistic challenges: If, for example, someone were to ask me who is responsible for something, and my answer is, “I am,” am I taking responsibility or am I blaming God? So, a better term was conceived.

Four times in the Old Testament, God is referred to as Jehovah. The term Jehovah actually comes from a Hebrew term, YHWH (early written Hebrew was written from right to left, had no vowels, which occasionally makes translation difficult). In any case, the Hebrew word simply means, I exist. I suppose that at one time, that was uniquely true of God: He existed, nothing else did. Later on, of course, He created the universe, and He was no longer the only form of existence.
I’m not entirely certain why God was so secretive about His name in the Old Testament. In many cases, even angels were not allowed to reveal their names to human beings. God refers to Himself by many different titles (Lord, God, Almighty, Holy One of Israel, Saviour, Jealous, etc.) in the Old Testament, but Jehovah seems to be the only actual name, but, as I said, even that is derived from the phrase He used to answer Moses. Even then, Jehovah is not the actual response that God gave Moses.

Interestingly enough, though, the phrase “I am” shows up again in the New Testament. When Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, He told them Abraham rejoiced to see His day. The Pharisees thought that was ridiculous; Jesus was clearly less than fifty years old (closer to thirty, actually, but they apparently allowed themselves a significant margin of error—or maybe Jesus just looked a good bit older than He was), yet He claimed to have met Abraham. Abraham had been dead a long time, so they didn’t understand how Jesus could say that He knew Abraham with a straight face. They challenged Him, and Jesus replied, still straight-faced, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Grammatically, that statement doesn’t really make a whole heck of a lot of sense. Any English major will tell you that it would have been more proper for Jesus to say, “I existed before Abraham’s time.” Even allowing for a little dramatic license, the sentence still should have been more along the lines of, “Before Abraham was, I was.” Why did Jesus use the present tense when talking about something in the far distant past? Clearly, it was a reminder of the words that God had spoken to Moses, all those generations ago. Perhaps He was trying to make the point that, to Him, past, present, or future, it really doesn’t make much difference. In any given period of time, Jesus existed, the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I really think that He was just trying to get them to understand who He was. I also think that they understood what He was trying to say, but they had already decided that He was not Who He said He was, and that His claims were simply blasphemyIt apparently never occurred to them that they might be the blasphemers. . Jesus wasn’t making anything of Himself. Perhaps if they had better understood Zechariah 14:9, particularly with regards to John 10:30.