So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. John 8:57-59

“Before Abraham was born, I am.” There He goes again, rewriting the language, messing with the tenses, breaking all the grammatical rules. Jesus is pre-existent. He precedes and surpasses time. He is the perpetual present. Before anything was, He is; after everything has been, He is. He turns language on its head.

Jesus has to break the rules because He cannot fit into our mental space. Jesus didn’t make this up; He got it from His father. God used the same trick when He talked with Moses:  Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:13-14). Uh … okay … makes perfect sense to me.

This is no doubt why the Jewish leaders picked up stones to throw at Jesus. No one was allowed to speak this way — no one but God. The testimony of Jesus speaks for itself. He communicates as He can in our language, but when our language fails, He has to go outside of it, just as His father did with Moses.

There is yet a way in which this is true for us. We are who we are. Nothing to add to or take away. We are who we are as well as what we are becoming, and because of the Spirit of God within us, we are something. We are who we are and that would include the unpredictable Holy Spirit in us, showing up at the same time we show up with all our mortality — vulnerable, needy, but empowered.