I Am

God is I Am and so am I. So are you; an image bearer with an assignment to produce. Life is the standard. Existence exists, so accept that and get after it. 

In the beginning, God created (Gen 1:1).   There was only one God in three persons, and then he created everything that exists.  In him, before the creation, were certain principles of Logos: logic, reason, math, objective truth, etc.  This is too mysterious for me to ponder too much, except to say that there is something fundamentally important about this fact.  Existence exists, along with objective truth of which God is the source.  

In Exodus 3:14 God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. When Moses asked him who he was so that he could tell the people who it was who had sent him, God said to call him, “I Am.” God is saying, basically, that he exists. He is the essence of all existence. I hope that you are smarter and deeper than I and can get everything out of that fact that can be gotten, but I can at least tell you where my brain has gone. Stay with me a little longer.

God exists. Existence exists.

Also, I exist.  You exist. God made us, and so we are.  You can say of yourself “I Am.”  Why? Because you are. But isn’t that blasphemous? I mean, that’s how God defines himself.  No.  You and I are made in his image: 

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:26-27).

Therefore, you are an image bearer of the I AM. You are at least a little “i am,” just like you are a little Christ if you are a Christian. Christian means little Christ. We are not to make graven images of the Father, first, because he said so, and second, because he already made one. Adam. You. Man is the image of God and that means something.

What does it mean that “i am?”

If that is true, what does it matter? Let’s start with God. He does everything because of his existence, because of the nature of his existence. What he says about it is that everything he does, he does for his glory (Isa 43:7). Why? Because it is glorious to exist. The phrase, “God does everything for his own glory,” starts with “God does.” To be God, is to do. God’s being requires, and has the effect of God’s doing. To be is to do. God does, because God is.

Before we keep going with God’s doing, let’s look at Adam’s doing.  Adam is.  Adam exists.  Adam’s existence means that Adam does things. And what things does Adam (and Eve, and you, and me) do?  It says in Genesis 1:28-29:

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

So that is what man was created to do.  In effect, he is to create. Who does that sound like?  God!  So part of being in the image of God is being a creator.  If God is the Creator with a capital C, then we are creators with a lowercase c.  Why would God create one of his creations to be creators?  So that we could continue to create on his behalf. He would effectually continue creating through his creators.  Man is “i am” like the great “I AM,” and to be “i am” is to be a creator. If we are not creating, then we are not being like God.  Right there is a clue as to what it means to live for the glory of God, or to do everything for God’s glory.  

Being uniquely human, is being a creator, a producer, a multiplier, a subduer of the earth (to create stuff out of it, like iron, fire, wheels, oil refineries, and solar panels, iPhones, and blog posts). Let me go out on a limb here and say that to be human is a potentially glorious thing, depending on the extent to which one lives out their calling as a bearer of the image of the glorious Creator who made them for that purpose.

Let me go out on a thinner, shakier limb and say that if God does everything for his own glory, and we are his image bearers continuing his work of creation, then we, too, might need to understand a sense in which we do everything we do for our own glory which is ultimately for his own glory.

Doesn’t Paul say in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? Why would it be sin to fall short of glory? Because we were created for glory. This is confusing because we only think of glory as coming from other men, but that is false glory. The glory God wants for us is the glory we receive at the judgment, at our glorification (Ro 8:30). Having been restored in Christ by his blood and sacrifice, we should start living a glorious life now. This means we start behaving like our maker, making, being, doing, according to his kingdom and his righteousness. The glory is not from men, it just is, and it is from God.

Please understand me. Everything we do is meant to be for the glory of God, but I think it is possible that because we don’t understand the honor that he has bestowed on us as his divine image-bearers, we can let our own self-doubt and self-loathing get in the way of what we could be doing for him.

This all speaks to purpose, and it flows from the basic fact of our existence. God has given us life. That means in part that “life” is the point of all this existing. He has called man to go and “live.” The purpose of man is to live. Jesus said he came to give us “life and life abundant” or “to the full” (Jn 10:10). There is something about that word “life” that goes with “creation” that goes with “glory”. We are destined as Christians to be “glorified” with him in heaven. If we are supposed to be living a restored life in Christ Jesus, then we are, in some way, supposed to be living a “glorified” life now, at least in part.

Here’s an example in Scripture of what it looks like to get a good and humble kind of glory here in this life: Proverbs 19:11 says, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”  The writer is saying that if one is slow to anger and can overlook an offense, it shows that he has good sense, and good sense is glorious.  It is to his glory that he does this. In what way is it glorious?  It is glorious In the fact that it is an imitation of God to be slow to anger.  To the extent that we are imitation the One who is and always will be most glorious, we are glorious.  

Most Christians seem to think that glorifying God in this life means going to church as much as possible and worshiping. Also worshiping at home, and in the car. This is true, but not the whole truth. If it were the whole truth then we’d be right to hate ourselves, because we don’t spend twenty-four seven singing songs about God and to God (which I love to do). But I say that our whole life, whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). How? By pursuing life as a creator because you are created by the Creator for that very purpose, and by doing this creating in the way that God would have us do, by displaying his character and nature in the process. Take your place as “i am” because he is the ultimate “I AM” and you bear his image.

Advertisement