Jesus' Greatest Hits: Before Abraham was, I am.

So I have been thinking a lot about how best to continue my blog series on the evidence for Jesus.  It seems like forever since I last posted on the subject.   I decided that instead of summarizing the rest of the classical evidence for Jesus, that I would take a different approach.   Besides, many have written long and extremely scholarly books on the subject, and I am no scholar.  

My approach will be to comment on certain things Jesus does and says in the Bible (specifically, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).   Not everything of course, but rather things that in my opinion are so unique, weird, or outrageous that they hint to the fact that there was something supernatural going on with this man.  These are passages that when I first read them, I had to put the book down and just contemplate the question.  It is the most important question.   “Who on earth is this Jesus?”   For the sake of this series, I am going to call these passages, Jesus’ Greatest Hits.

The first Greatest Hit I want to explore is found John, Chapter 8.   As per usual, the Pharisees are confronting Jesus, because they hate that people are following him instead of them.   The Pharisees were the most devout Jews of the time; they were the strictest of the strict, super religious, and corrupt to the core.  They start insulting Jesus, claiming that he has a demon and is crazy.   Eventually it comes to a head, and they ask him point blank, “Who do you make yourself out to be?”

The Pharisees took great pride in being direct descendants of Abraham, the ancient man who the whole nation of Israel descended from….so Jesus responds:

⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

⁵⁷ So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Wow.  What a strange sentence.  Before Abraham was, I am.   It is truly unbelievable what he is implying here.  There are three amazing implications.

1.       He is implying that he existed before Abraham, despite obviously being in his thirties.  To give you some perspective, according to Jewish genealogies, at the time Jesus said this, Abraham had been dead about 2000 years.  Roughly the same amount of time between now and when Jesus said this.  So obviously this is quite the claim.

2.       Why didn’t he just say, "I existed before Abraham", or "Before Abraham was, I was".   The sentence he actually says, instantly sounds strange to us when we read it.   What’s going on here is remarkable.  He is the only person that can utter a sentence like this, because he is claiming to be eternal.  He has no cause, he never came into being the way Abraham did or all of us did.  He is making a claim that he simply exists without beginning, without end.   It’s a mind bending concept.   Think about it for a second.   Before, Abraham was, I am.

3.       Lastly, he is claiming to be God.   Way back in the book of the Exodus, when Moses asks God what his name is, He responds: “ I AM WHO I AM, Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” Exodus 3:14   Again, he could’ve just said, I’m God.  Instead, he amazingly just says I AM.  He simply exists.  He necessarily exists.   He is the God who is there. 

The Jews he was talking to knew exactly what he meant…because the next verse says that they all picked up stones to kill him as a blasphemer.

Maybe it’s just me.  I just love that verse.  It’s a supernatural claim.  He could’ve said it another way, but he said it this way.  He said it in a way that frankly, is too ridiculous for a human to make up.   This is the kind of verse that makes me believe that the incident happened exactly as it was written.  It makes the story more reliable.   This is the kind of verse that just makes me stop and think, Wow, it really is true.

Let me know what you guys think of it?   If you want to read the story, it’s in the second half of John 8.