I have made your very being known to them—who you are and what you do—and continue to make it known, so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am in them (Jn.17:26 The Message)
When Moses was commissioned to go to Pharaoh as Israel’s deliverer he had also to present himself to his own elders as the one God had sent. When he asked God whom he should say had authorised this, God said, “tell them I AM the I AM, and that I AM has sent you and that I’ve heard their cry and I’ve come to rescue Israel.”
The ‘I am’ of someone is the essence and the self-knowledge of their existence. When I say ‘I am’, I declare the fact and the self-awareness of my existence - and I state both the obvious yet profound. The ‘who’ of me is my ‘I am’ – a self description that entails all that is within me (Psm. 103:1). It’s the signature of my being. We use it all the time – and curiously, tend to use it in present tense, even when speaking of the future; ‘I am (I’m) going on holiday next week’ (rather than ‘I will be’)! In 1971 Neil Diamond wrote and sang a song called ‘I am, I said’. One critic described it as ‘raging existential angst’ but it’s a beautiful song that struggles with the truth of his ‘I am’ and its search for connection (for those who remember or are interested, the lyrics are reproduced below). People may shout ‘God doesn’t exist’ (‘the fool says in his heart “there is no God”’ Psm. 14:1), but God shouts louder, ‘I AM’ – and the sound of His voice, as Psalm 19 says, is heard through the entire creation!
God is the original and originating I AM: all other ‘I ams’ derive from Him. Before anything was created He was I AM. He has always had being and for ever will – a difficult concept for mortals confined to a very different and limited realm. When He said those words – that name - to Moses, it was not a smug response. It was fact; a statement designed to demonstrate His uncreated and self-existent nature; ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh translates as ‘I AM I AM’ or, I AM being what I will be’. Created things, like the gods of Egypt had names and identities given by their (human) creators. The un-created One just IS! He is the un-nameable One who is forever being. In grace He has given us names by which we can approach an understanding of His nature and character. He is the I AM from whose mind, imagination and will, everything else that is, came to be, and is!
The I am in me is an echo of His I AM: from His original personhood, His eternal ‘I AM-ness’ God created beings like Himself, with whom to share His self-hood, identity and life. Our ‘I am’ is what He has put in us of Himself and it is put there to resonate with the I AM who He is. That self-awareness that knows that I am, that I exist, I have being – came from Him as a gift that makes us in His likeness. It is what John calls ‘the true light that lights everyone who comes into the world’ (Jn.1:9). We are that unique part of His creation into which He imprinted His likeness and it is this that separates us from the rest of creation. We are not animals – we are a separate (higher) order of creation made in His image and likeness! I have an ‘I am’ which is capable of imagination, creativity, intent and will – and for response to I AM!
An ‘I am’ joined to His I AM is a vehicle for His glory: this is why darkness tries to extinguish the ‘I am’ of God’s people as Pharaoh tried to extinguish the ‘I am’ of Israel, but God heard their cry! Israel groaned because of her bondage and God heard their groaning and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ex.2). Israel’s groan came from her collective and oppressed ‘I am’; from a people whose identity and ‘who-ness’ (to coin a term) was being extinguished. God’s idea was to give them a name, an identity, a land and an inheritance, to make them a blessing - a reflection of I AM in the earth. Egypt (a ‘type’ of sin and independence) is a robber; her objective is to extinguish the potential of each person’s ‘I am’. But He always hears the cry, directed to Him, from a created ‘I am’. His desire is to have the ‘I am’ He put within us, joined again to His I AM because, like an object and its reflection, they are intended to function as one. (Imagine if your mirror reflection one morning moved independently of you!!)
The I AM in the world: There is a train of thought running through John’s gospel about this. It starts from the depot at 10:38 and stops at stations at 14:10 & 14:11, where Jesus talks about His ‘joined-ness’ to Father. Then, at 14:20 He says, ‘in that day you will know that I am in my father, and you in me and I in you’!! That day is when the Spirit comes (v.16), whose work is to minister to us the reality of joined ‘I ams’. The train stops again at 17: 21-26; ‘that they may be one, as you Father are in me, and I in you; that they may also be one in us ….. I in them and you in me ….. that the world may know that you have sent me’. Read verses 6, 12 and 26 substituting ‘I AM’ (meaning the essence of my nature) for ‘your name’. In v.26 Jesus says, ‘and I have made known your I AM essence and nature (name) to them and will continue to do so ….’ (How? By His Spirit).
John’s gospel has seven statements where Jesus uses the I AM signature (over and above the remarkable ‘before Abraham was, I am’ statement of Jn. 8:58). They express beautifully the essence of the I AM who dwelt among us – and what He wants to enliven our ‘I am’ to be. Here they are –
•I am the Bread of life, 6:35
•I am the Light of the world, 8:12
•I am the Door, 10:9
•I am the Good Shepherd, 10:11
•I am the Resurrection and the Life, 11:25
•I am the Way, the Truth & the Life, 14:6
•I am the True Vine, 15:1
John said in his first epistle, 1 Jn.4:17 ‘as He is, so are we in this world’ and here’s the thing: as the fusion of my ‘I am’ with His I AM grows, His essence will grow in and from us. He said, ‘I have manifested your (I AM) Name to them and will continue to’. So we also are becoming bread (‘you give them something to eat’! Matt. 14:16); we are becoming light, (‘you are the light of the world’ Matt. 5:14); we are becoming a door, (‘I give you the keys of the Kingdom’ Matt. 16:19); we are becoming good shepherds, (‘inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me’ Matt. 25:33-45); we are becoming resurrection life (‘out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’ Jn. 7:38); we are becoming the way of truth and life – also Jn. 7:38; and we are becoming part and parcel with the True Vine for abundant fruit production (Jn.15).
The outcome He desires from the fusion of our ‘I am’ with His I AM is, ‘We are’ !!
Here is Neil Diamond’s song ‘I am, I said’
LA's fine, sun shines most the time
And the feeling is ‘lay back’
Palm trees grow and the rents are low
But you know I keep thinkin’ about
Making my way back
Well, I'm New York City born and raised
But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores
LA's fine, but it ain't home
New York's home but it ain't mine no more
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
I am, I cried
I am, said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still
Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king
And then became one?
Well, except for the names and a few other changes
If you talk about me, the story's the same one
But I got an emptiness deep inside
And I've tried but it won't let me go
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
But I've never cared for the sound of being alone
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
I am, I cried
I am, said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
I am, I said
I am, I cried
I am...
Someone does hear! When a person’s ‘I am’ cries out like this it’s because the I AM is beckoning. So far as I know, Neil Diamond has not yet submitted to I AM.
Ian Heard February 2, 2014