WHAT IS THE BIBLICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF “I AM WHO I AM?”

Rev. Dr. Steven Kau, Faith Covenant Church, Subang Jaya, Malaysia

Throughout the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, God is known by His four-letter name, called in theological terms the Tetragrammaton – YHWH. The king James Version of the Bible masks His name to some extent and most of the time the King James version translate YHWH as “LORD.” However, this same name is translated as Jehovah in some cases in the King James Version. (Exodus 6:3; Isaiah 12:2; Isaiah 26:4) The Rotherham translation uses the word “Yahweh” as the translation of God’s name. In all these cases, the meaning of the Hebrew name YHWH – God’s name – is “the self-existent,” “He who becomes,” or “the becoming one.”

The Hebrews words in Exodus 3:14 for “I AM THAT I AM” are “ehyeh asher ehyeh” which should more accurately be translated “I will be what I will be” or as Rotherham translates it, “I will become what I will become.” This expression in Exodus 3:14 is an idiom, an expression that has meaning that cannot be understood by the individual words. So what does “I AM THAT I AM” mean?

By using the translation, “I will become whatsoever I may become,” we see the relationship of this phrase to Yahweh – “He who becomes.”

They both use the word “become.” Exodus 3:14 was God’s way of assuring and pledging to Moses and Israel that God would become whatever they needed Him to become.

When Jesus came on the scene in the New Testament, do you know why Jesus used the phrase “I am?”

“Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” (John 8:58)

One of the stunning scenes in the Gospel of John is where Jesus debates the Jewish leadership at the end of chapter 8 and declares, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am.” There is little doubt that this constitute a claim of divinity because in the very next verse we read, ‘So they picked up stones to throw at Him.” (John 8:59) While there is little doubt that the Jews understood Jesus to be claiming a divine identity, there is some doubt regarding why they believed this. What is the background of Jesus’ “I am” declaration? Most of the time it is assumed that Jesus is alluding to Exodus 3:14.

While this is certainly a possibility but the Greek construction are not precisely the same. There is another possibility that is more likely the background of Jesus’ “I am” declarations, namely the Book of Isaiah, particularly chapters 40-55. Not only are these chapters formative for early Christian theology but they contain some of the most direct declarations of God’s identity as the only true God. And many of these declarations use precisely the same “I AM” construction (ego eimi.)

 For example, Isaiah 41:4, “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first and with the last, I am He. (ego eimi)

It is commonly claimed that when Jesus used the phrase “I am” He was making a direct reference to the name of God in the Old Testament. There is certainly some truth in this but I want to suggest three important caveats to this claim.

·      “I am” by itself is not a code for the name of God.

·      “I am” is only intended to refer to deity in some of Jesus’ sayings.

·      Paying too much attention to the “I am” part of the sentence distracts readers from paying attention to the rest of the sentence.

1. “I am” by itself is not a code for the name of God.

The Hebrew word “I am” is often used by God in the Old Testament but rarely as His title. It is used by many people simply to refer to themselves. (Judges 11:9; Ruth 2:13; David 2 Samuel 18:18); Jonathan 1 Samuel 23;17;  2 Samuel 16:18; Job 12:4) and many others use it to refer to themselves. It is a quite normal way to say, “I am” for everyone.

 

 

 

2. “I am” only intended to refer to deity in some of Jesus’ sayings.

What makes “I am” distinctive in God’s declaration to Moses (Exodus 3;14) is that it doesn’t have what is called in theology “predicate normative.” (The predicate normative is the second half of the sentence)

There are three times in the Gospel of John when Jesus says “I am” without a predicate normative. John 6:19-20, John 8:58, John 18:6-8. These passages seem to be more about Jesus’ deity than all the other “I am” sayings in John.

In Jesus’ other, more famous “I am” sayings, the emphasis is often not on His deity but on some important aspects of Jesus’ identity. For example, when Jesus says, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener,” (John 15:1) His claims focuses not on His deity but on His idea that he is the only vine that God tends and so branches can only experience genuine life and the father pruning if they are attacked to Jesus, the true vine. In fact, the vine was a symbol of Israel and so Jesus was claiming to be the true source of life in place of Israel.

It is significant that the church fathers did not make any sort of connection between the seven “I am” saying and God’s use of the “I AM” in Exodus 3:14. This is highly significant because the early church fathers spoke Greek as their native language. Their nearness to the time of the New testament also meant that they had less of a historical/cultural gap to bridge.

3. Paying too much attention to the “I am” causes readers to ignore the rest of the sentence.

I have often noticed, when listening to sermons or reading student papers about “I am” saying in John that there is too much focus on the “I am” part and its purported reference to deity that the actual claims found in the rest of the sentence are overlooked. These claims (bread of life, good shepherd, door, life etc0 while consistent with Jesus’ deity, are actually about some other nuance of Jesus’ identity.

To sum up: The Gospels clearly teach about Jesus’ deity but that does not mean that everything Jesus says is about His deity! “I am” is such a common phrase that it cannot be taken as some sort of code word that always refers to deity. The tendency to see it as a code often keeps people from paying careful attention to Jesus’ actual claims.