Jesus said, “My I-am-ness [mirrored in you] is your way; this is your truth and also your life! Every single person is now brought face to face with the Father entirely because of my doing.”
John 14:6 MIR
When Moses asked God at the burning bush about his name, God answered: “I am”. This name is taken from the same word as the name we all know, Yahweh. Yahweh is best translated existing or being.
Moreover, Jesus uses this name for himself so many times. In Greek, it is ego eimi.
When Jesus says I am, it is more than just using the verb to be. It is a reference back to the name of God, both the name revealed to Moses as well as the name Yahweh.
This is also expressed by the explicit use of ego. It usually is left out in Greek, as the verb form perfectly includes the first person singular.
The translator of the Mirror bible translation expresses this by making a noun out of the verb: I-am-ness.
It is Jesus’ I-am-ness, his partaking in the name of the father, that has him be the way, the non-concealment, and the life.
It is his acceptance of his godliness. It is expressed in the translation using the possessive pronoun my. He owns his godliness.
When the translator adds mirrored in you to the verse, he does so as a theological statement, not because it is written in the text. Thus the brackets.
Every translator does so, most of the time without showing it to the reader. The theological framework always plays a role in the selection of translation.
Here, the translator first refers back to the creation story in Genesis 1-3. We are made in God’s image and likeness.
He also refers to Jesus being all human. If he mirrors the I-am-ness of God, so do we.
Jesus came to this earth to restore our purpose to us, to receive and reflect the light shining from the eternal desire to give. In reflecting the light, we make visible the image of God hidden in the light. We display I-am-ness.
What is happening here:
The fact that Jesus accepts his I-am-ness and in this makes it possible for us to accept our I-am-ness too, this is the way to the father.
How does this play out?
Accepting that we are one with the father is what the father has been waiting for all this time that we spent in a distant land. He readily accepts us back as if we had never been gone. And matter of fact, we have not been gone. It was merely our perception.
We can see this play out in the parable of the lost son, as I have shown in a previous installment.
It is most important that Jesus does not hold back this truth from us, and that is what he is telling us here:
Jesus’ acceptance of his I-am-ness is expressed in his non-concealment. He is not holding anything from us, just as the father was not in creation.
We believe that there is always something lacking, some deed we have to do, some hoop we have to jump, some secret we do not know for us to please the father. But there is nothing.
Yes, God is a playful God. He likes to hide things for us to search and find. He would never hold them back though. The whole purpose is for us to find them. He does so because he knows our childlike curiosity–and he reminds us to be like little children, too.
He also knows us inside out and knows what we can fathom at any stage of maturity, both as individuals as well as humanity as a whole. Revealing things when the time has come is grace, not withholding and ill-will.
This grace, this responsiveness to our growing state of consciousness and ability to grasp complexity brings life.
Interestingly enough, Jesus told us 2000 years ago, and the father did so way back when Genesis was written, that we are I-am-ness. We just were not able to grasp the grandeur of it. He is revealing it to us now even more deeply than the growing understanding we had over the millennia.
He knew that some day, this would open up our purpose to us of being one with the father, receiving him and reflecting him, thus making him visible and existing.
That is, Jesus put us on a trajectory that would lead us to this revelation of oneness. We are truly born into the multitude of the firstborn.
Have you ever noticed that the lost son, even though he was the younger, behaved as if he were the firstborn?
We can too. I can, because I am.
I say, “My I-am-ness [mirrored in you] is your way; this is your truth [as I hold nothing back from you] and also your life! You are now brought face to face with the Father entirely because of my doing.”
John 14:6 Ralph