The Daily Word

All the I AM's we have considered thus far are all found in John’s Gospel. John wrote his Gospel, it is believed, many years after the other Gospels were written, and his Gospel is much different in structure and content but still supports the other accounts by Matthew, Mark and Luke. And please remember that John had not seen any of these other Gospels when he was writing his Gospel , probably as an old man looking back over the new church that he and the other Apostles had brought into being but was based totally on Jesus Himself.

The emphasis John puts into his Gospel is spiritual teaching, not a diary of the events of Jesus life and well over 50% has been remembered from the Upper Room meeting just before Jesus’ crucifixion, which is why we have so many key sayings of Jesus.

But John also wrote 3 letters to churches he had been associated with and the book of Revelation. And it from that book that we will be taking our last 2 “I AM’ statements. But these are so different as they were given to John after Jesus had returned to His Father. The first statement made by Jesus as he saw the vision is “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”

This has some similarity to the opening words of John’s Gospel and marks the fact that Jesus is eternal. Though He stepped into time to pay the price for our sins, yet that was a very brief interlude in His eternal existence as part of the Trinity. It is written for us as time-restricted beings in terms we can grasp but points backwards and forwards to events we can only surmise, the creation and the wrapping up of creation. What it doesn’t say, but is implied absolutely by the statement, is that He is also the middle, which is where we are and that is our comfort and strength. We feel His presence daily, just as He promised, “Behold I am with you always.”

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church