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The Originals Week 1, Day 5

by David Joynt on January 11, 2018


 

John 6:48 | 8:12 | 8:58 | 9:5 | 10:7 | 10:11 | 11:25 | 14:6 | 15:1

 

John understood that the central mystery of faith is not Jesus'
words or deeds, but his identity. In the fourth Gospel, this
identity is presented through a series of unique "I am" statements.
In Exodus 3, Moses, the shepherd in hiding, is called by God to
lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt. He asks God for his name and
is given the phrase "I am who I am," rendered Yahweh in the rest
of the Old Testament and signifying that God is the self-existent
One that determines freely all things. Jesus takes up this holy
indicative, but fills it with concrete images drawn from earthly
existence—I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the True Bread, I
am the Vine, I am the Light of the World, I am the Good
Shepherd, I am the Gate, I am the Resurrection and the Life, and
before Abraham was I AM.

 

 

Turn the "I AMs" into a confession of faith by substituting "You
are."

 

Tags: faith

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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