John 8:58

‘Jesus said to them, “In very truth I tell you that before Abraham was, I am'.

At this claim they must have been shocked to the core. They had accused Him before on the basis of enigmatic statements, but this final statement could not be misunderstood. Whatever Jesus had meant previously it was now patently clear that He was claiming to have had eternal existence, to have been in continual being long before Abraham. He was indeed saying that He was the ‘I am', the eternally existing God, the One Who existed even before the world was created (compare John 17:5).

In the Septuagint (LXX - the Greek Old Testament) God claimed in Exodus 3:14 to be the ‘I am' (ho on -the One Who is) the equivalent of ego eimi (which literally translates the Hebrew ehyeh), the phrase Jesus used here, whilst His Name as YHWH meant ‘the one who is'. Now His claim was unequivocal. He was claiming to have pre-existed Abraham and to have everlasting perpetual existence. He was claiming supreme deity. Thus the chapter ends with His uniquely claiming to be ‘the Son of God' in the fullest sense of the word.