The Deity of Christ — David Vallance

Now, again, I apologize, I have a bit of bronchitis here. I'm not really the shouting type, so I don't think I'll wear it out, but I will have to measure that as we go along. As Brother Orr was saying, this is a subject that I suggested among some others and I really was very, very pleased when he said that he would like to take this topic up because what could be more important, what could be more critical, central, and beloved to God's people than the person of our Lord Jesus Christ?

This is life eternal, Christ himself said, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Later on, when John's writing his epistle, he simply says, he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

So everything that God has for us is in the person of his beloved Son. What I'd like to do is begin by reading a passage in each of the meetings and then explaining that passage and then branching off from there and developing the themes that are on the outline that you have.

So we're going to begin by turning to the Gospel according to John, Chapter 1. And we're going to read John's prologue. I'm reading from the New King James Version. I trust that isn't a problem with you.

It updates some of the words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out, saying, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me.

And of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.

Now you know John's Gospel is divided into two major sections. The first we call the Book of Signs. That's from chapter 1 through chapter 12, and in that we find John's seven signs that he gives to authenticate who Christ is as the Son of God.

Then from chapter 13 through chapter 20, we have the Book of Glory, as it's often called. And much of this is occupied with the last week of Christ's life, the upper room ministry and the cross, and of course, his death and resurrection.

And then we have an epilogue, chapter 21. So John begins with a prologue, ends with an epilogue, and he has these two major sections. What we've just read together is John's prologue, and I couldn't think of a better place to start when we want to talk about the eternality, the preexistence, and the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These meetings, I trust, will have something for everyone, but the main thing I want to avoid is being cold and calculated and being scholastic and as boring as dust. I would rather that we had our hearts warmed, as we've already heard, and that these be devotional meetings, not just providing facts, but warming the heart.

So you can pray for me that God will help me to do that. With his help, it can be done. Let's begin with this wonderful expression at the beginning. In the beginning was the Word. That is, the eternal Word in the beginning was the Word.

What beginning is that? Well, it's the beginning of all beginnings. It is before the beginning of Genesis chapter 1, which is the beginning of time. This takes us back to eternity. In the beginning, the Word simply was, because he always has been.

Then we find out the second phrase, not only is he the eternal Word, but he is in an eternal fellowship, because now we're seeing a distinction between the Word and the person here who is called God. And the Word was with God.

And then we have a third expression, and the Word was God. Now one thing about the writings of John, the vocabulary is always very simple, the sentence structures are always very simple, the words are relatively common, and yet through the help of the Spirit of God, he writes the most profound things in the New Testament, and this is an excellent example of that.

In the beginning was the Word. We find out later in this chapter that the Word is the Son. We find out later that he is the Christ. But he is called the Word here because he is the one who communicates the mind of God to men.

And he is called the Word because he is the one who communicates divine truth and shows the heart of the Father. He fully tells him out, as we read out later in the chapter. Now, the Word was with God shows us that there are at least two persons in this fellowship that we call the Trinity.

The word Trinity per se is not in the Bible, and a better word would be triunity, because although God is one, there is a complexity in that oneness. One of the great cries that Israel always would make comes from Deuteronomy chapter six, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.

Now, the word that is chosen there for one Lord, emphasizing the unity of God, is the Hebrew word echad. And it can be used of a complex unity. For example, a cluster of grapes is a single cluster, and yet it has different fruit bodies within it.

So, it is the word for one that allows for a complexity, or in fact, what we're getting here, the truth of the Trinity, three persons in the Godhead. Now, how can God be one and three at the same time?

If you came here to have the Trinity explained in absolute detail, you've come to the wrong place. This is a truth that is beyond, of course, human understanding to a large extent. But I think we can get a good start on it.

First of all, if we were to say that God is one and he is three at the same time, and in the same sense, we would be speaking nonsense. Because that's illogical. Now, you say, well, logic doesn't always work in the Bible.

Yes, it does work. Much of the Bible goes beyond our ken, but nothing is illogical in the Bible. So God is not one and three at the same time and in the same sense. He is one in essence. He is three in persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now, you say, does that mean each of them is a third God, and that you put them together and you get the whole God? No. Each one is fully God. This is where we do move beyond the understanding of the human mind, and we cannot fully understand or explain it.

We simply accept it by faith. This is a dimension of existence. This is truth that is beyond the, of course, finite minds of created beings like we are. So the eternal word and the eternal fellowship, and then this great statement, the word was God.

Now, I want to talk about that phrase for a minute because there are some misunderstandings about what this might mean. If, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses come knocking at your door, they'll say, you know, this says the word was a God.

It doesn't say it was God. It's a God. Well, first of all, it's a very naive statement because there was no concept among the people here of Israel that there were a multiplicity of gods. They denied such a thing.

So to say that he was a God makes no sense to a Jewish reader. But I want to be, here, okay, I'm going to get a little technical on you, all right? So I hope you don't mind, and if you do, you can tell me later and I'll cut it out in the other meetings, all right?

But this goes like this. It says, I'm going to actually tell you what the Greek expression is. It says, the word, the logos was God, theos. But the order is as follows, theos, God, ein, was, ha, the, logos.

The word was God. Here's where I'm going with this. I'm sorry. The antihistamines are affecting me. How would you say this in the most emphatic way to emphasize that the word is actually God? You would do it in exactly the way that it is done in this.

You would start out with the word that you want to emphasize, and that is the word, the word theos, or God, was the word. I'm sorry if I'm not coming out as fluently as I want to here. Word order in English is the word was God.

The Greek reverses it to emphasize that God was the word. So when you say God, you hit the table or the counter at that time, that's your emphatic word. Now, why doesn't it have the word the or the definite article before it?

And the answer is because it's a nominal sentence. And this is the way in which you identify the predicate, which is what you're equating God and the word to be. I'm going to leave that because it's not coming out as clearly as I want.

Take the bottom line. This does not say the word was a God. It says in the most emphatic way possible that the word was God and emphasizes God. It's the quality of God that is emphasized here. And he was in the beginning with God.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about where John heads in this. Actually, we'll move down the section a little bit. Elizabeth, the forerunner of Christ, there was a man from God whose name was John. He came for a witness to bear witness of the light.

This forerunner was six months older than Christ. You remember the story, right? The Lord, first of all, brought Elizabeth a pregnancy and then finally Mary, her cousin, six months later. But look what he says in chapter 1 verse 15.

John bore witness of him and cried out saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me for he was before me. Now, drop down to verse 31 in the chapter. I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel.

It's actually farther down the chapter. I can't remember the number of the verse now, but later on he says that he was before me again. So, if John is saying that he has before me and yet he's six months younger than me, he must be, of course, referring to the pre-existence of Christ, which we're going to talk about now.

But then John talks about the rejection of Christ. He was the true light which gives light to every man, but he was in the world. The world was made through him and the world did not know him. And then as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the children of God.

Now, here's verse number 14. The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. I want to talk a little bit about the pre-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's actually verse 30 I was looking for now that I have my note in front of me, so we'll correct that. In verse 30, this is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who is preferred before me before he was before me.

So here we have the pre-existence of Christ taught by the fact that John the Baptist is six months older than him as a man, but that Christ predated him in his existence. Now, another way that John shows the pre-existence of Christ in his gospel, if you turn over to chapter three, is that he will show in verse number 13, no one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is the son of man who is in heaven.

So we have this expression that he came down from heaven. If you look to verse 31 of this same chapter, he who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth.

He who comes from heaven is above all. So the pre-existence of Christ means that he existed before he became a human being. Now, the pre-existence of Christ was taught by some of the early heretics who did not believe that he was truly God, and we're going to get to that in a moment, but they knew that he pre-existed.

And that's where Arius went off the rails, and you may have heard of Origen, and these are the people who gave rise to the modern cults like Christadelphians and even Mormons, but especially Jehovah's Witnesses, who believed that there was a pre-existence of Christ before Bethlehem, but they will not give him the full place of deity, which we are going to talk about shortly.

The pre-existence of Christ, though, means that he came into the world from heaven, and now we're going to affirm that he came in as the son of God. He came in as the one who is God, fully God, the second person of the Trinity.

Not only did he pre-exist before Bethlehem, but he has always existed. He is fully God, and he is God manifest in flesh. Now, does the Old Testament give us any hints that Christ was a pre-existent person?

I think the place that I would turn to first is Micah chapter 5, verse 2. But thou Bethlehem, Ephrata, though thou be small or little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth unto me, the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, this is the expression I want now, the days of eternity.

So Christ comes out of the days of eternity. He transcends time, he is beyond time, and he comes as God into the world, and he is born in this place called Bethlehem, Ephrata. Bethlehem means the house of bread.

Ephrata means fruitful. And so here we have the bread from heaven, the manna, the Christ coming down to be all that we need as our Savior, and being fruitful himself and allowing us as well to be fruitful.

Another place that we see Christ in his pre-existence in the Old Testament is in the angel of the Lord. You're familiar with this expression, the angel of the Lord, and understand that in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord is seen to be God himself.

And yet, in some places, he is distinguished. For example, in Zechariah, when he's talking, the angel of the Lord is talking to the ancient of days. So here we have again this same concept as we had in John chapter 1, verses 1 -3.

The word was with God, and the word was God. There are two persons mentioned, each of whom calls himself I, and calls the other you, but they are one God. And so, that is the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, the pre-exist, the pre-incarnate Christ.

Sometimes we call these theophanies, which means the manifestation of God, but I prefer to call them Christophanies, because it's really the manifestation of the pre-existent Christ. Now, let's give some examples of this.

In Genesis chapter 16, we have Hagar, and she is, as you know, despondent over what is happening to her after she is thrust out by Sarah, and the angel of the Lord appears to comfort and encourage her.

In Genesis chapter 21, we have the angel of the Lord coming down to, I should say, chapter 18. He comes down to Abraham with two other angels, who are clearly not the angel of the Lord, but are his servants.

So, the three of them talk to Abraham, and of course, those two servants then go down to the city of Sodom, and Abraham continues to struggle, if you will, in prayer and in conversation with this person who is none other than the son of God in his pre-incarnate state.

We know that he is God because he has the attributes of God. We know he is God because he accepts worship. We know he is God, for example, in Judges, where in chapter 13, we have the story of Manoah and his wife, and the angel of the Lord appears to them to promise the coming of Samson, and of course, he then ascends in the smoke of their offering back to heaven.

Now, this is not Christ manifest in the flesh. That didn't happen until the conception that occurred in the womb of Mary. But this is a physical manifestation. It is a revealing of God through the second person in the Old Testament.

We find, again, the same thing in the burning bush, where we have the angel of the Lord appearing to Moses, and there are other examples as well, the angel of the Lord coming to defend Joshua the high priest in Zechariah chapter 3.

Now, let's return to the first chapter of John and talk a little bit more about the only begotten from the Father. When you come to the word only begotten, and here I am looking at verse, if you go back to John chapter 1, the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth is chapter 1 verse 14.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Notice that the word became flesh. The King James Version, I think, says the word was made flesh, but it's very important to understand that the word existed, and he became something he was not before, although he retained and continued to be everything he was before as the Son of God.

He became flesh, and he pitched his tent. You know that story, and he put his tent down on earth. He tabernacled among us, as showing that he came down from heaven to live as a man and to walk before God.

And we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. But I want to talk about this expression, the only begotten, for a moment. Now we have to understand some things.

There are accommodations that God has to make because of our limitations and because of the fact that we have vocabulary that we have to work with. Let me give you some examples. Do you think that God looked at marriage and said, that's very interesting.

There's a man and he loves his wife. I think I'm going to use that as an illustration of Christ and the church. So we'll start with the human situation, and we'll back up and say, that's very similar to what I want to do with Christ and the church.

No, you would all know that I have that exactly backwards. God's original plan was to have a bride for his son. And that bride for his son was planned from eternity. And to illustrate it in human experience, he made men and he made women and he designed marriage so that we in this world would understand something of what he has in mind for his son from eternity.

So the pattern is in heaven, the copy is on earth. Same with the tabernacle. Where's the original tabernacle? It was not pitched in the desert of Sinai. The original tabernacle, the design is in heaven, and that is a replica.

So it is with human fathers and human sons. Human fathers give rise to human sons with human mothers, right? But the original pattern is the heavenly one. And in the heavenly pattern, we're going to talk about sonship in a separate topic, so I don't want to go into this in detail.

I'm using it as an illustration right now. In the original pattern, we have an eternal father and an eternal son who are in fellowship with each other. The son did not originate from the father. That's where the human pattern falls and fails.

But the basic idea of relationship between a father and a son, of likeness of character or identity, and of the fact that the son is the heir and he's going to inherit everything from the father, these are the basic concepts that God has always had true of himself and his son.

And therefore, human fathers and human sons were created in the world to illustrate that truth. So why am I going into that detail? Because when you read the word only begotten, you must understand that that does not mean that Christ came out of the father in the sense that he originated from the father.

Both persons of the Trinity are co-equal and co-eternal. They're equal in glory and equal in might, equal in majesty. The son is not dependent on the father in terms of origin. But you say the word begotten, well, we have to understand that this is an accommodation.

It's also an idiom. That is to say, it had a meaning that is different from the actual basic idea that we would get from only begotten. It means you only have one son, and it means he's your son, and it means there was a time he came into existence.

And the answer is no, that's not what it means in the New Testament or the Old Testament. Only begotten means first in affection. It is the one who is chiefly prized and chiefly loved. Now, God helps us to understand that this is not a birth order thing so much.

But it's rather a position that he grants to his son, that he always has had with his son. And it is a position that is absolutely not dependent on the son coming out of the father in terms of origin.

So we have the best illustration of this, first of all, in Genesis chapter 22. If you read in Hebrews chapter 11, the word only begotten, which is the word we just read here in John 1 .14, is used of Abraham offering his only begotten son.

And you go back to Genesis 22, and you try to put yourself in Abraham's shoes. And Abraham is, you know, he's, God comes to him, God tests him, God is going to take him through a trial. God is going to try to get him to understand God's own heart, because God had to give his son.

And God was not able to spare his son, he did not spare him. And he wanted Abraham to take him right to the brink of being where God actually would go. And Abraham would understand in his heart and in his consciousness what it really means to give a son.

God wanted him to experience that. No wonder he's called the friend of God, because he understands God, having gone through that experience. And all of us can try to enter into it, obviously, by reading it as well.

So God says, now, Abraham, take your son. Abraham says, well, what do you mean? I have two sons. Your only son. No, I have two sons. You don't even Isaac, do you? Please mean Ishmael. Isaac. What God is saying to him is that I want you to take the one who is chief in your affection, the one who is the son of promise.

I want you to take the one who is most near and dear to you, and I want you to offer him in the land of Moriah at the place I will tell you about. Now, that is, as I said, Abraham is the person in the Bible who enters most into what God himself experienced the father when he gave his son at the cross.

From then on, we find out that this is a regular pattern where the firstborn in terms of time is not the firstborn in terms of rank. Or the one who is called the only begotten is not the only son, but rather is one chief in affection.

So now we're going to turn to the... I'll just take this expression up since it's coming to mind right now and it's a very similar concept. What about this expression, the firstborn? Firstborn is the same principle that we have seen with the idea of only begotten.

It means not the one who was born first. You say, well, of course it must mean that. That's what firstborn means, born first. Well, again, we have to understand what the Bible is going to do with this.

It is a position of rank. If I said that only begotten is a position of affection, then firstborn is a position of rank. And again, we go back to Abraham and his two sons. Ishmael is the firstborn, but Isaac is the one who has the first in rank.

And therefore, he's the firstborn in terms of the Bible's basic meaning, the kernel meaning of this term. And so throughout not only Genesis, but the Old Testament, we're going to find regularly that the firstborn son is supplanted by a younger son who actually becomes the firstborn.

So we see that with Isaac and Ishmael. We see that with Jacob and Esau. We see this with Manasseh and Ephraim. We see this with Joseph and Reuben. We see this with Adonijah and Solomon. You keep looking for it, it's all over.

Why is God doing this? Because he's going to have this title of firstborn applied to his son, and he does not want us to ever misconstrue that as somehow meaning that he was born at any time. It's not talking about origin, it's talking about rank.

And so where does the Bible say that Christ is the firstborn? In the New Testament. Romans 8 tells us he is the firstborn among many brothers, many brethren, right? He's first in rank among the people of God whom he redeems.

We read in Colossians chapter 1 and in Revelation chapter 1 that he is the firstborn from among the dead. So he is the first in rank in a new resurrection, at which he is not only the one who broke through and provided that original resurrected life, but he becomes the one who is first in rank with all those who follow him in that glorious resurrection.

He is called, excuse me, the firstborn as well in the book of Hebrews, and we're going to look at that in the next meeting, so I won't go into that at this moment. So if Christ is the only begotten son, he's the first in his father's affections.

If he is the firstborn, he is the first in rank in all that God has made and all that he will do. So those are interesting. What about the word begotten? Again, this is where people have made errors because they think that it must mean origin, and it doesn't.

It means relationship in the Bible when it's speaking of the person of the father and the son. So let's go back to our origin and arias right from way back in the early days of church history. They said, we're looking at this, we see this word begotten, and we're saying, this must mean he had a beginning.

And what I'm arguing right now is that the Bible clearly teaches the exact opposite, that the beginning of Christ refers to his relationship with the father. We're going to talk a little bit more about this when I expand on the concept of sonship.

So they ignore the way the Bible presents Christ obviously as fully God, and they get fixated on this idea. Now there were people who said, well, that's clearly wrong, but we still can't get our minds around this idea that begotten doesn't mean somehow that there's derivation.

So we're going to invent, we're going to talk about the son is eternally generated from the father. We're going to talk about eternal generation. I'm saying, what does that mean? That's nonsense. That's still to misconstrue the basic idea that the one who is begotten is speaking of the relationship that's eternal between the father and the son.

Now let's go back to John chapter one for a minute, and well, we haven't left it, have we? The word became flesh and dwelt among us. I want to talk about how John now expands from this prologue and will explain the deity of Christ in a number of interesting ways throughout the Gospel of John.

First of all, there is his use of the expression I am, right? Now, you know the Jews won't use that word. They won't pronounce Y-H-W-H, the Tetragrammaton, because it's a first person name. So if you were going to say the name, as I just did, I am, by uttering that, I am actually claiming to be the one I'm not.

I'm taking God's name on myself. And the Jews found that to be highly offensive and sacrilegious to them, and so they refused to pronounce that name because it is not a third person name. It's a first person name.

You can't say it without claiming it. And therefore, for Christ to brazen, I shouldn't say brazenly, but to boldly state throughout the Gospel of John in a number of ways I'm going to show you, I am is to take the very title that God gave to Moses at the burning bush.

I am who I am. This is the person of God is the eternally existent one who has this concept that we call aseity. That means he has the very power of being in himself. There was never a time he wasn't.

He simply is. He's outside of time. He is the one who exists. And he says, I am who I am. I am what I am, and my name is Jehovah or Yahweh. Now, a lot of modern scholars like to use the word Yahweh because they think that is more likely to be the pronunciation.

Where we get the word Jehovah from, where does that come from? With our German friends, of course. Where J is a Y, so that's where the J comes in. And what they were doing, of course, was recognizing that the Hebrews would take the vowel points from Adonai, and they would put it on Yahweh.

But they wouldn't pronounce it. They would use the word Adonai instead. I used to sit next to an Orthodox Jew one time in a philosophy class, and we were, many years ago, and I was watching him take notes.

I wasn't cheating. I wasn't, like, looking at his answers or anything. I was just, he was sitting next to me, okay? We weren't, this wasn't a test. And he would push, he would even do such things as write G-D.

He wouldn't even write the word God in English because he revered that name so much. So, therefore, if you have that mindset and understand that to the Jewish thinking this is a sacred name, it cannot be pronounced.

And to say it is to claim it. And it must always be substituted. And that there's euphemisms that have to be used. You can't state it boldly and plainly without being guilty of blasphemy. Then for Christ to boldly say, I am, I am, I am, I am, throughout the Gospel of John is very, very important.

Now, there are a number of I am blank. I am, we'll go through them. There are the seven I am's in the Gospel of John that equate Christ to something. But I also want to come back in a moment to talk about the absolute uses of I am.

The absolute uses means he simply says the sacred name, I am. So let's go through these. You know the I am statements of John. Each one is a claim to deity. But it is also providing information about how God helps us.

How God has come to our aid. How God can save us. So he says, I am the bread of life in chapter six, right? He is the one who sustains his people. He feeds them. God with us. God has come down to provide for our needs.

Obviously, chiefly our need for salvation. But beyond that, all the sustenance that we need in our lives. I am the light of the world in chapter eight, right? He's the one who gives light. We saw that at the beginning.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. Light shines in the darkness. The darkness can't overcome it. It can't comprehend it intellectually, perhaps, if it is willfully blind. But it certainly, as opposing it, cannot overcome it.

The minute the light shines, the darkness is dispelled. I am the light of the world. That's quite a claim. That's a claim of deity. I am the one who gives light. Not only physical light, but I give spiritual light.

I am the one who enlightens every man who comes into the world, as we read in the beginning of John 1, verse 12. And he says, I am the door. Now we're in chapter 10. And I am the good shepherd. We get two in chapter 10.

I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. So we have a way of access into God's sheepfold. We have a way of access into, if you will, salvation. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

We understand that this one who is God is going to now substitute his life for men. He's going to be their shepherd, their protector, their guide, their sustainer. But beyond that, he is actually going to lay down his life for them.

So God is going to be the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. Then he says, I am the resurrection and the life, chapter 11. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

So by coming out from the grave himself, of course, he provided the power of eternal life for all of us. And he is the one who grants life. He granted our first life, our biological life. He grants our spiritual life.

He is the one who is resurrection and life. This is God. No one else could make that claim. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Now we're in chapter 14, verse 6. I am the way in that I am the truth and I am the life.

All claims to deity and exclusivity, obviously, right? I am the only way. No one cometh unto the Father but by me. Finally, for his own, I am the vine and you are the branches. So I want you to understand that John is deliberately going through these seven I am statements, which occur in this book of signs.

And we haven't talked about the signs yet. We've talked about the I am statements to show that Christ, the one who is introduced in the prologue as the one who is in the bosom of the Father, and the one who is with God, and the one who is God, is claiming to be God by using these I am expressions throughout the gospel.

But there are some interesting absolute uses where it doesn't say I am X or I am Y or I am Z, but there's simply no predicate. It's simply the absolute, which means by itself, use of the sacred tetragrammaton, the sacred name of God.

Interesting, the first person who hears it is the woman of Samaria. I who speak unto you am he, is how our English translation typically says. But in the original, it's simply I am. And of course, she understands that he's the Messiah.