There is still more in this chapter, for it reveals the person of the Lord. It shows us who the Lord is.
The Lord is Jehovah, the great I Am (8:24, 28, 58). I Am is the meaning of the name Jehovah (Exo. 3:14), and Jehovah is the name of God in relation to man (Gen. 2:7). Hence, it denotes the Lord as the ever-existing God in relation to man. The Lord as the great I Am is the everlasting One who exists from eternity unto eternity. He is without beginning or end of time. As the great I Am, He is the self-existing One, ever existing for eternity. He is not only Jesus, a man from Nazareth; He is the great I Am.
To say that the Lord is the I Am means that He is whatever we need. It is like having a blank check on which you may fill in the amount that you need. If you need light, you simply fill in light, and the Lord will be your light. If you need comfort, the Lord will be your comfort. This kind of check will never bounce, for there is never a shortage of deposits in the heavenly account. Be bold to write in a big amount. What you write in is up to you. The Lord is everything you need. Now it’s up to you to fill in what you actually need. He is the great I Am.
As the great I Am, the eternal, ever-existing God, the Lord is before Abraham and greater than Abraham (8:53). The Jews did not understand this and argued with the Lord. “The Jews then 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 came into being, I am” (8:57-58). The grammar here is awkward, for the Lord said, “Before Abraham came into being, I am.” According to grammar, He should have said, “I was.” But He is the present One, the I Am. Whether it is past, present, or future, He is always the present One.
As we have pointed out by what is mentioned in verses 32 and 36, the Son is the reality. The Lord is the Son as reality for imparting all the divine element into His believers.
Another aspect of the Lord is that He is the Son of Man. On the one hand, He is the great I Am; on the other hand, He is the Son of Man (8:28). The Jewish people lifted up the Son of Man, but they could not lift up the I Am. This seems quite strange, but according to verse 28, it is only when they lift up the Son of Man that they will know Him as Jehovah, the great I Am. He was lifted up for the serpent-poisoned sinners in the form of a serpent in order to cast out the old serpent (John 3:14; 12:31-34; Rev. 12:9; 20:2). He was lifted up in order to deal with the serpentine nature and with the serpent himself.
How could the Lord be the One who was sinless? Because He is Jehovah, the great I Am. How could the Lord condemn sin? Also because He is the great I Am. But how can He as Jehovah forgive sin? You must remember that Jehovah could never forgive sin. If Jehovah forgave sin, He simply would have made Himself unrighteous. There is only one way for Him to forgive sin, and that is by being the Son of Man and being crucified on the cross. In other words, He could only forgive sin by redemption. Without redemption God Himself would have been unable to forgive sin. Without redemption there would have been no ground for the forgiveness of sin. Because He was lifted up on the cross as the Son of Man, bore our sins, and redeemed us from all of our sins, He had the position to forgive sins.
The whole Gospel of John also reveals that the Lord is the Word and the Spirit. There is such a thought throughout the whole Gospel. Once you see the wonderful person of the Lord in this Gospel, you will ask, “Where is He and how can I contact Him?” Praise the Lord that He is in the Word and in the Spirit, for He is the Word and He is the Spirit. You now have both the Word and the Spirit. If you contact the Spirit and receive the Word, you then have the Lord Himself. You have everything by abiding and continuing in the Word of the Lord (8:31). If you keep yourself in contact with the Word of the Lord, it means that you are abiding in the Lord Himself. By contacting the Word, you are contacting the source of the eternal and everlasting life.
Consequently, because you are always in contact with the Lord Himself, you will never taste death (8:51). This has been proved by history. When some of the saints were about to die, they did not taste death even though they were dying. For example, when D. L. Moody was dying, he died bravely. He died without tasting death, because he was abiding in the Lord and contacting the source of life. Likewise, if we will abide and continue in the Word of the Lord, we will also contact the source of life all of the time. Then we will never taste death. We will pass through death without tasting it.
The Gospel of John is a book of life. Many times in this Gospel people asked the Lord questions with the intention of receiving a yes or no answer. However, the Lord never answered yes or no. For example, in chapter four the Samaritan woman said, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men must worship” (4:20). In other words, she was asking Him which place was the right place in which to worship. The Lord Jesus did not say which place was right. He said that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in spirit (4:24). It is not a matter of here or there; it is a matter in the spirit in which we can contact God, the tree of life. The Lord Jesus did not answer her with a yes or a no, but turned her to the human spirit to contact God, the tree of life. The principle is the same in chapter eight when the Pharisees brought a sinful woman and asked the Lord whether or not she should be stoned. Again, the Lord did not give a yes or no answer. He said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (8:7). The Lord’s answer turned them to the Lord, the tree of life. Later, when we come to chapter nine, we shall see that the disciples asked the Lord a question about the man who was blind from birth, inquiring whose sin, his or his parents, had caused him to be born blind. The Lord answered them by saying, “Neither has this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him” (9:3). Once again, the Lord answered by pointing them to God, the tree of life. The Gospel of John is a book of life and it never gives answers that are according to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but always turns people to the tree of life. There are no answers of right or wrong, good or bad, yes or no. There is only one thing—life. You do not need to be right, just like you do not need to be wrong. You need only to care for life. When you have life, everything is fine.