Joel M Bradshaw

 56Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.–John 8

A theory in Jesus’ day held that Abraham looked forward to the age of the Messiah and was some kind of prophet. This is based upon seeing God provide the substitute (Genesis 22:13) for the sacrifice of Isaac and God’s promise to Abraham that the nations would be blessed through his line (Genesis 12:3).

Jesus didn’t say ‘Abraham saw the time of the Messiah and was glad.’ That wouldn’t have been controversial. He instead said that Abraham saw Jesus’ day. This either means that Jesus lived in Abraham’s time or that Jesus is the fulfillment of all that Abraham saw. They of course chose option 1 and pushed back.

Notice Jesus doesn’t say, ‘before Abraham was I was.’ That would simply have meant he claimed to be older than Abraham and they would have dismissed it out of hand. Instead John recorded two Greek words that literally read “I, I am”. Any rabbis in the crowd would have picked up on the doubling and thought of a verse like Isaiah 43:11 which says, “I, I am Yahweh”. That connection most likely would have angered them to hear Jesus make it. Although any with ears to hear might have had hope stirred within them at that connection. Could this have been the long awaited Messiah, the fulfillment of Father Abraham’s promise?

That “I am” of John 8 is both present and active in the grammar. That means that the Son of God Jesus claimed to be was and is always present and active. Jesus was linking himself to the I Am implicit in the covenant name of Yahweh that introduced himself as “I Am” to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. Our modern Jewish friends today replace it respectfully with HaShem meaning “the Name”.

The people could have interpreted Jesus as crazy or taken his words for real. And they chose violence. They understood what Jesus was claiming. Anyone who says that Jesus never claimed to be God has to understand that the people heard his words and immediately picked up stones to kill him. They knew what he was saying and it seemed blasphemous to their ears. Jesus wasn’t just a man, but was and is also God in the flesh. He exists as God and so does the Father. At least this is what he was claiming. What do you do with this passage of Scripture?–JMB