Everyone loves a good mic drop moment—a dramatic final line of a speech that leave the crowd in an uproar as the speaker casually walks off the stage. And Jesus brings this chaotic, two-chapter discourse to a close with the greatest mic drop of all time. It’s short and sweet, it has confusing grammar, it outrages a crowd to the point of murder and it has sent theologians reeling. Absolute dramatic perfection.
Jesus packed so much meaning into this little phrase “I AM.” First of all, in some way that boggles our human capacity to understand, Jesus is timeless. Every minute of history, from the dawn of creation to the end of this world, is Jesus’ here-and-now present; he dwells outside of time and holds it all in his hand, and our language is simply not equipped with the words to better describe that. He is sovereign over, and present in, all of history. And that means he has been the unifying thread through the Old Testament, from Adam to Abraham and from Moses to David. He was always all of their hope; he tied the whole story together. In fact, this little phrase points his listeners to the name of God that Moses heard from the burning bush: “I am that I am.” With the drop of a mic, Jesus tells the world in this verse that he is Yahweh himself.
And by the way, this is as clear a claim of divinity as it gets. The Jews heard it and immediately tried to stone him, a special response reserved for blasphemy against God. They knew perfectly well what Jesus was saying.
One thing I know is that our idea of Jesus isn’t nearly big and glorious enough. Jesus is the great I AM. He is the very God that created all things, has been sustaining it since, and enriches our lives daily with grace now. He is our God; he is our fulfillment and hope; he is our everything. He lives and reigns and governs every smallest part of our lives. How differently we would think and live if we truly understood the "I AM" divinity of Christ!
