And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).
After His arrest, the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put Him to death, and found none (Mark 14:55). Then they got their sought-after witness from Jesus Himself when the high priest asked Him: Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? (v.61), and it only took two words from Him. I Am!
As a matter of fact, this was not the first time He had thus identified Himself as the self-existent, eternal God. On an earlier occasion in Jerusalem, He had told the Pharisees: I am the light of the world, and then, I am from above: . . . I am not of this world. . . . If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins (John 8:12,23,24; the He in verse 24 is not in the Greek original).
He made this especially clear a few minutes later when He asserted: Before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58). But when He finally made this wonderfully truthful claim in the presence of the council, they all condemned Him to be guilty of death (Mark 14:64). He had committed the capital crime of blasphemy in their opinion, by claiming to be God.
I am is, in fact, the very name of God. When Moses, at the burning bush, was called by God to deliver the Israelites from slavery, God said His name was I AM THAT I AM (Exodus 3:14). The name Jehovah (or Yahweh), the most frequently used name of the Lord in the Old Testament, is essentially this name.
One can count at least 196 I am claims of God in Christ (I am the way, the truth, and the life, for example John 14:6) in the Bible. Truly our Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal, self-existent God, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Revelation 22:13). HMM