John 8:58

Before Abraham was, I am.

Here the Saviour claims with a double “Amen” the Incommunicable Name (Exodus 3:14). It signifies unchangeable essence and everlasting duration. This is the name which the Jews for centuries had not dared to utter. Silently they had read it, used another in its stead, revered and adored it. Now the humble Nazarene openly assumes and claims it. God’s word to Moses implies the impossibility of a full definition of the name, or that finite creatures could not comprehend it if given. He does not say, “I am their Light, Life, Guide, Strength, or Tower.” He sets His hand to a blank, that faith may write her prayer. Are believers weary? I am their strength. Poor? I am their riches. In trouble? I am their comfort. Sick? I am their health. Dying? I am their life. I am justice and mercy, grace and goodness, glory, beauty, holiness, perfection--all-sufficient through eternity. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.)

I am

This title teaches us

I. THE SELF-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST. The creature is a dependent being; God alone is independent and self-existent.

II. HIS UNCHANGEABLENESS. Change is written on everything earthly. The billows of a thousand generations may sweep over the rock, but it is steadfast. Jesus is “the same today, yesterday, and forever.”

III. HIS ALL-SUFFICIENCY. We are at liberty to write what we like after “I am.” Whatever you want to make you happy, put in there. (J. M. Randall.)

The eternity of Christ

With filial pride the Jew thought of “Father Abraham.” So hearing of our Lord’s lofty claims they asked, “Art thou greater than he?” “Yes. He rejoiced to see My day.” With prophetic vision, doubtless; but surely more than this is meant. When did Christ’s “day” begin? Away back at the time of the first promise it broke. God, called also “the Angel of the Lord,” or Christ Himself temporarily assuming human form, appeared to Abraham more than once, and perhaps here is a reference to a revelation of Christ, brighter than the rest, but made known to none other. Then the Jews said, “Thou art not fifty years old,” etc. Our Lord replied (literally), “Before Abraham was brought into being, I exist.”
The statement is not that Christ came into existence before Abraham, but that He never came into being at all. The Jews understood this as a Divine claim, and took up stones against Him as a blasphemer.

1. Then we think of the eternity of Christ. There never was a point when He began to be. Not so with man, angels, the universe. Go back eighteen hundred years to the time of Abraham; back further still to the time of Noah, Enoch, Adam; back before any creature existed: “In the beginning was the Word,” etc. Meet Him anywhere in eternity past or in eternity to come, and He says, “I am.”

2. How can we think of the eternity of Christ? What know we of eternity? Suppose the patriarchs were living now, with what awe should we listen to their words weighty with the experience of millenniums. But they had a beginning. Let the ages be reckoned back to when the world was not, and added to those which shall follow till it shall cease to be, and what shall we pay for the stupendous sum total? But this is not eternity. Call in angelic numeration, and gather into one gigantic aggregate the sands of the shore, the drops of the ocean, and the stars of the sky; what would it be? Only a spot of spray to the immeasurable ocean.

3. But the eternity of Christ is a doctrine most blessed and practical, because related to the Divinity of Christ. We need a Divine as well as human Saviour, and we have one in the “I am.”

I. Is Christ eternal? THEN ASSURED IS THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING THINGS, “By Him all things consist.” Because He is eternal, the stars wax not dim; they are as bright to us as they were to Abraham. Because He is eternal, the flowers of each coming spring are as fair as their blooming ancestry in the dawn of the world. Because He lives, “While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest … shall not cease.” Because He lives man lives. How sweet and fresh the beauty of the newborn child! The hand of the Eternal has moulded it. And so come the successive generations of children. The years bring changes, and the man is unlike the child. Yet the soul that lives in Christ is never old; it is “renewed day by day.”

II. Is Christ eternal? THERE IS HOPE, THEN, FOR EVERY MAN. Withdrawn from human sight, He ever liveth to make intercession for us. Stephen saw Him, and Paul, and John; and now He reaches forth His invisible hand to save.

III. Is Christ eternal? THEN WE HAVE ONE ABIDING FRIEND. We can lose much here; much, thank God, that it is well to lose--ignorance, bad habits, sin. But there are some bereavements that impoverish us, through injustice, misfortune, accident, loss of friends. But if Christ is ours we have an eternal possession. He loves us to the end. Lose what we may, who can be poor with Him. “Who shall separate us,” etc.

IV. Is Christ eternal? THEN HIS KINGDOM THOUGH DELAYED SHALL COME. We wonder at the tardy steps of Truth. But what are the millenniums to Christ? His name shall endure forever. (G. T. Coster.)

The pre-existence of Christ

Does it appear that Christ was conscious of having existed previously to His human life? Suppose that He is only a good man enjoying the highest degree of intercommunion with God, no reference to a pre-existent life can be anticipated. There is nothing to warrant it in the Mosaic revelation, and to have professed it on the soil of Palestine would have been regarded as proof of derangement. But believe that Christ is the Only-begotten Son of God, and some references to a consciousness extending backwards into a boundless eternity are to be looked for. Let us then listen to Him as He proclaims, “If a man keep My saying He shall never see death” (John 8:52). The Jews exclaim that by such an announcement He assumes to be greater than Abraham. The response to this is, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day,” etc. Abraham had seen the day of Messiah by the light of prophecy, and accordingly this statement was a claim on the part of Jesus to be the true Messiah. Of itself such a claim would not have shocked the Jews; they would have discussed it on its merits. They had latterly looked for a political chief, victorious but human, in their expected Messiah; they would have welcomed any prospect of realizing their expectations. But they detected a deeper and less welcome meaning. He had meant, they thought, by His “day,” something more than the years of His human life. At any rate, they would ask Him a question, which would at once justify their suspicions or enable Him to clear Himself (John 8:57). Now if our Lord had only claimed to be a human Messiah He must have earnestly disavowed any such inference. He might have replied that if Abraham saw Him by the light of prophecy, this did not of itself imply that He was Abraham’s contemporary. But His actual answer more than justified the most extreme suspicions, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In these tremendous words the Speaker institutes a double contrast in respect both of the duration and the mode of His existence, between Himself and the great ancestor of Israel. Abraham had come into existence at some given point of time, and did not exist until his parents gave him birth. But “I AM.” Here is a simple existence, with no note of beginning or end. Our Lord claims pre-existence indeed, but not merely pre-existence; He unveils a consciousness of Eternal Being. He speaks as one on whom time has no effect, and for whom it has no meaning. He is the “I AM” of ancient Israel; He knows no past as He knows no future; He is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal “Now.” This is the plain sense of his language, and perhaps the most instructive commentary on its force is to be found in the violent expedients to which Humanitarian writers have been driven in order to evade it. (Canon Liddon.)