I AM: Eternity
“I AM THAT I AM” communicates an eternal timelessness inconceivable to human experience. We exist in a fractional, fleeting, unquantifiable moment that we call “now”. But “now” becomes past as quickly as it arrived from the future. Most of our life, considered from the point of view of experience, is either past or future. Memory and anticipation are our concept of ourselves and the world. The present moment is an almost non-existent thing.
For God, the situation is exactly opposite. I AM THAT I AM says, all moments are present for God. Every moment in the past, present and future is known, seen and experienced fully by God. No moment in time becomes remote for God. No moment in time is only probable or possible. No moment in time is anticipated or hoped for. For God, past, present, future have full and equal existence. All of time is an eternal Now for God.
Several other terms or titles communicate this idea:
“I, the Lord, am the first; And with the last I am He.” (Isaiah 41:4)
“Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,” (Isaiah 46:10)
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” (Revelation 1:8).
These verses create a deliberate connection or cycle from what we perceive as the beginning of time and its end, from the remote past to the furthest future. Scripture claims that God is present in all those times equally and does not have to wait for some times to arrive, nor does He lose other times to His past. In a way, God has no past.
Past, present and future unite in the fulness of God’s existence. Indeed, the name YHWH seems to suggest “I AM WHO I WILL BE” or “I AM WHAT I HAVE BEEN AND WILL BE”. God’s name YHWH is a combination of three forms of the Hebrew root word for being: Hayah, Hoveh, and Yihyeh. These three words mean, respectively: “He was,” “He is,” and “He will be.” This is explicitly the language that describes God in the book of Revelation, stated four times: the God “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8, 1:4, 4:8, 11:17).
Embedded in the name of God is his eternal timelessness. If human history is a straight line, and we exist as moving along that line, God is the circle that encompasses the line.
When was God? When is God? When will God be? He is. I AM THAT I AM.
This post first appeared on Churches Without Chests, the personal blog of David de Bruyn, who is the pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. We republish it here by permission.
Image by Eensteen used under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.