“I AM”
An Exposition of the Gospel of John [John 8: 21-26]
By ROBERT GOVETT.
…This was the last occasion of the
Saviour’s public teaching, as given in John. It probably occurred at the Feast
of Tabernacles. They would die in their
sins. The Christian in Christ dies to his sins, and is buried in baptism, to
rise to a new position beyond them.
Israel was morally, and of set choice, the people of earth
refusing the heaven and its Leader; and led by Satan, the god of earth, and of
this evil age.
John 8: 21, 22. ‘Therefore
Jesus said again to them – “I am going away, and
ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sin; where I
am going, ye cannot come.” The
Jews said, therefore – “Will He kill Himself, that He
saith Where I am going, ye cannot come?”’
Jesus warns them, that the time of mercy to their nation and
themselves personally, was during His presence on earth. He was about to withdraw; partly as the
result of the Father’s counsels and His own; partly as the result of their
refusal of Him. Their opportunity of
being saved then was fast closing, and they would one day seek salvation when
it was too late. There is no opening to
find the Saviour after death. ‘Seek the Lord while He may be found: call upon Him while He is near,’ Is. 55: 6.
This then gives Jesus again the place of Jehovah. Is any reader trifling with Christ’s
call? ‘Any day
will do.’ Then he is near to perish. The day is hastening, when God will be afar,
and salvation impossible! ‘Ye die in your sin.’
Not ‘sins.’ The unbeliever’s attitude is always sin. It is not that the un-renewed man sometimes does good, sometimes evil. He
always is, and always does evil, and only evil. This is his constant
standing before God! His heart towards
God is enmity, and unbelief always; and that is constant sin (
During life, there is the opportunity
to escape from this place of sin and of danger.
To this escape, to this salvation through Himself, Jesus was then
calling them. But they were making light
of it, and hardening themselves against the Deliverer and His salvation. The opportunity the Saviour here supposes
would cease at death. After that comes the
eternal separation of the saved and lost.
There is no renewal after death among the dead. The awfulness and reality of the threatened
lot of God’s foes is seen then, realized too vividly in wrath begun. But there is no deliverance: no escaping by their own prayers, or those of others.
Christ was going away to heaven. They would, at death, go among the lost in
Hades. And after their final judgment (Rev. 20: 15) they would be cast into the lake of
fire and brimstone. Here lies the
eternal golf between the two.
Thenceforward there is no restoration: no struggling out of the place of
damnation to the city of the saved: no dwelling with
the Saviour when once adjudged to the doom of the lost. A great golf will eternally sever the
inhabitants of heaven and of hell (Rev. 21: 8; 22:
15).
Verse
22. ‘Then said
the Jews, “Will He kill
Himself? because He saith
Whither I
go, ye cannot come.’”
The Saviour’s enemies sneer at this
terrible threat. ‘What does He mean?’ ‘Will He commit sucide? Then, indeed,
we shall be eternally separate. But
then, He will go among the lost; and we shall be quite content so to
be separate from Him.’ For they imagined themselves to be righteous by Law, and that they
would depart at death to Abraham’s bosom.
Like most sinners, when reproved, they
turn not their eyes on themselves, but seek to find some inconsistency in their
Reprover.
Verse 23. ‘And He said unto them,
“Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this
world; I am not of this world.”’
Our Lord will remove from them this pretence; but His words
become ever more stern and terrible, as their unbelief more and more shows
itself. ‘You
cannot come where I am going; because we both return whence we came. I came down out of heaven, and am going back
thither again to My Father. You came
forth out of the earth, and are returning body and soul to the earth.’
‘Ye are out of this world; I am not
out of this world.’ Here is a
passage referring to the Saviour’s origin, the same in sense with John 18: 37.
Here is supposed our Lord’s pre-existence. He is no mere man. His origin is to be sought, not on earth; but
in heaven.
Verse 24. ‘I said therefore unto you,
that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am,
ye shall die in your sins.’
The present verse takes up (in that small seeming change from ‘sin’ to ‘sins,’)
the altered aspect of salvation, as it regards the forgiveness of certain acts
of sin, through faith in Christ.
Sins un-forgiven bring perdition. The only way to pardon was, not by
obedience to Moses, but by faith in Christ the Son of God. The forgiveness of sins brings in justification. The change from the entire attitude of sin to holiness is the work of the Spirit
by faith in Christ ; and is sanctification.
‘If ye believe not that I am.’* I suppose that our Lord, by these
words, takes to Himself the name and attributes of God-head. He requires the acceptance of the doctrine. To refuse this is to perish.
[* There is no ‘he,’ which our
translators unnecessarily supply.]
To see the matter in its fullest and clearest light we must revert
to Moses’ commission in the desert. Moses beholds God. But he
knows not by what name he is to present Him to
He is the ‘I AM’
that showed Himself in the desert to Moses. Mediator and the Godhead are now One.
‘I am.’ It is God's especial title (Deut. 32: 39-41; Ps. 102: 25 - 27; Is. 41: 4 – 43: 10).
Jesus, then, presents Himself
as the Divine Deliverer. To refuse, in unbelief, God as He reveals Himself, is to perish; especially when it is mercy which is refused, and when justice has
already condemned. The refusal of Christ
the Saviour, through whom alone
forgiveness can come, is hopeless despair. If
This is still the great question between God and many who call
themselves Christians. ‘Is Jesus God, the
Son of God?’ ‘They
can’t accept it. It is too astounding:
too incredible!’ The reason of
the ‘cannot’ is a spiritual one. They do not believe in the awful and infinite
justice of God, as demanding perfection of His subjects, and the utter iniquity
of man in heart and life. The incurable depth
of the disease, and the Godhead of the Physician go
together. And as they deny the intensity
and incurableness of man’s disorder, and his inability to deliver himself from
the grasp of a broken Law, they refuse the tidings that none but God can heal
and deliver. Anyone could carry the
tidings of God’s mercy; but who could obey and atone?
To refuse and speak against Moses - the faithful servant - was
to Miriam sudden leprosy; and to Aaron, the priest rebuke. To Dathan it was the
being swallowed up by the earth, a going alive down into the pit of woe. To Korah it was to be laid low by fire from the tabernacle. If God thus
avenged the offences against Moses and Aaron, the servants, what shall be His wrath against the refusers of His Son? (Heb. 10: 28-31).
Verse 25. ‘They said therefore to Him, “Who art Thou?” Jesus said to
them, I am in the beginning, that
which also I am discoursing of to
you.”’
The Saviour’s reply on a mysterious subject is
mysterious. It is designedly mysterious.
These were not candid enquirers. The One born of the Spirit uses mysterious
words. It is difficult, then, to decide
what is the proper translation of our Lord’s words. The English version of this passage is not
good. Probably it should be – ‘I am in the beginning, that which I am also discoursing to
you.’ John seems to be, by these
words, sustaining and proving what he said of the Word made flesh being God, and with God from the beginning.
‘I am’ is to be supplied. And in John, specially
in relation our Lord, it refers to the beginning of creation. Satan was (v. 44) after the beginning. Jesus was in it, and as the Creator (1: 3).
Others may speak the Word of God in time and in measure; but
Christ both is, and speaks the Word of God. He was so from the beginning (Compare Is.
52: 6). He reveals God as the Lord, and also in His
essence.
These words are a subdued statement of His Godhead. He who is God, must
also be the beginning of all, as Creator. Thus John, in his Gospel, and in the first
epistle, introduces Christ as He who was eternally with the Father, and at
length manifested to us. 1 John 2: 13, 14, present to us Jesus as ‘I am,’ and ‘He who was at the beginning,’
were the subjects of our Lord’s discourse. He was Himself the ‘I
am,’ in the beginning with God, and the cause the existence of all
things from the first.
It was foretold in their Scriptures,
that the mighty God would at length appear, and that they would not recognize
Him when He came, though His words and His deeds of power and grace proved it (Is. 6., 8., 9: 5; Mic. 5: 1-3;
Mal. 3: 1). The Godhead of Christ
the Son of God: this is the stumbling-block still to many! But to fall over this stone is to perish!
Verse
26.
‘I have many things to say, and to judge
concerning you; but He that sent Me is true; and I
speak to the world those things which I have heard of Him.’
‘You are bent on judging Me. I have much that I could say in the way of
convicting you of your sinfulness.’ Till the hearer is convicted of sin,
he does not understand the greatness and glory of the Redeemer. When the soul is really oppressed with the
sense of sin, and the terrors of God coming to judge it, then he feels somewhat
of the need of a Saviour greater than itself, or than any son of man. Jesus could have refuted their cavils at
length; but his eye is fixed on accomplishing the errand on which the Father,
who is the Lord of truth, has sent him.
Thus the Saviour passes by that line of argument, to utter to the world
instead, the truth committed to Him by the Father. And this He would declare, not to
In their cavils, then, and resistance
to His teaching, they were fighting not against Himself alone, but against the
God of their fathers. For
Jesus spoke at the dictation of the God of truth.
In thus testifying about Himself He
was only carrying out the Father’s mind, who directed Him thus to
discourse. It was only the Son who could
thus manifest God. This was God’s
counsel, that He should be known, and known by the acts and words of the Son.
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