One of the great myths of the 4th century manmade deification of Jesus is to claim he made a parallel statement as God to Moses. This thread explodes that myth. The question of who God is must be looked at from the perspective of Is 45:5 and 1 COR 8:6
Is 45:5 (REV) I am Yahweh, and there is none else. Besides me, there is no God.
God's name is explicitly YHWH and note his use of singular pronouns? Singular denotes one and not 3-in-1. This is consistent with
1 COR 8:6, there is only one God, the Father. This logically means there is no trinitarian God, no God the Son, no God the Holy Spirit, no 3-in-1 God.
P1. YHWH is the only God (who we relate to as father).
P2. Jesus is not YHWH.
C. Jesus is not God
From this perspective, let's examine the great I am statements.The VOICE translation renders the eternal name YHWH to honor God's defining attribute he revealed in Ex 3:14.
Eternal One: 14 I AM WHO I AM.[a] This is what you should tell the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to rescue you.”
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Footnotes
3:14 “Eternal One” is derived from the Hebrew word meaning, “I am.”
The significance of this is the fact that other gods in the near East were born and died. So, to say that an eternal God sent you is to set you apart from the rest. How this rendering of the divine name plays out is clear in
Ps 110:1. The Eternal said to my lord. "The Eternal" is not our lord but stated in contrast to our lord and our lord''s nature.
Jesus never said he was eternal as God did. What Jesus said was:
Jesus: 58 I tell you the truth; I AM before Abraham was born.
So, he existed before Abraham. This is not a claim of existing eternally, only of being older than the time Abraham was born. Plain and simple.
To put a finer point on it, some believe one's existence begins when God conceives the thought of you and not when you were born.
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you
There is that word again, "before."
- How could God know us before we existed?
- If God knew us before we were formed in the womb, could God know Jesus this way also? (And in this way, Jesus preceded Abraham's birth).
- In what way did God know us before we existed/formed in the womb?
- Perhaps our existence pre-dates being formed in the womb?
The Bible is silent on these questions. However, Jesus sidesteps any of this confusion by anchoring the time frame of his existence "
before Abraham was
born" and not when God knew Abraham before God even formed him in the womb. Jesus is not even claiming to exist eternally before Abraham's birth. That's a critical point of reading comprehension.
I submit Jesus does make a great "I am" statement but it is not in reference to Abraham.
Mark 14:61-62
High Priest: Are You God’s Anointed, the Liberating King, the Son of the Blessed One?
Jesus: 62 I am.
For confessing to being the Messiah, the Christ, God's Anointed One is the reason he was killed, which led to saving all mankind; Jesus great "I am" statement. Jesus was born and died. Both prove he is not eternal and this aligns with the Biblical text. We should stop pretending Jesus is eternal or ever even claimed to be. Better to resist the doctrinally driven eisegesis to interpret Scripture beyond what it actually says.