Jesus was acknowledging that he was God when he said that.
I don't see that emphasis in the text at all. In fact, this is one of the characteristic short one-liners Jesus uttered and they a short enough in my view to have been easily remembered and repeated.
Please show me how you come to such a conclusion. Are you positive you are not just projecting your own personal theology and meaning
back into the quotation?
Jesus says we can know what is in their hearts by what they say.
It doesn't take a quotation from Jesus or anyone else to indicate the buried wisdom in such an idea. And if we aren't particularly self-aware of our own unique thinking processes, we will forever be walking the earth believing we and we alone are right.
Humility is a virtue, the way I see it.
Jesus told us to pay attention to the logs in our own eyes before we deem to point out the tiny specks of sawdust in others. So what are YOUR logs in your own eyes? Can you tell me and reveal the truth in an open forum?
Jesus also says that we are to judge those who call themselves brothers.
Name-calling and mockery was not part of his advice. Remember what he said about calling our brother "a fool"?
You will not know what the scriptures truly mean until you do what Jesus says. That is when Jesus will reveal himself to you. See John 14:21, and John 7:17.
America has a long way to wait for Jesus' revelation then. We have become a modern Roman Empire that has already nailed him to the cross. There is no sanctity of life, no nonviolence, no loving our enemies, plenty of immature and ignorant judging, and not too much forgiveness extended to others. And don't get me started on our moral failure to take in the stranger and the immigrant and open our homes and our table fellowship to them.
A valuable bit of theology in John has Jesus saying that no one comes to the Father except me. Forgetting the obvious emphasis on how great he is saying his personality is, it is a useful thing to remember when we look at other world faiths around us. Jesus is God, love, justice, mercy, peace and love personified in my view. And no one can get to the Father without realizing that only by coming to God with love and peace and justice and mercy can come to the Father.
And you continue to exhort others to "believe, believe, believe" without suffering the slightest urge to squarely face your own behavior towards others. I see you as a bit arrogant. I do not like bullies, particularly theological bullies.
Again, the Jesus of John's gospel is so foreign to the Jesus of history in the synoptics that it is hardly useful for pontificating on what Jesus "really" wants!
John's Jesus does not "walk his talk" and for this reason, I personally do not look for Jesus as he was when walking the earth. John is crammed through with theology, not history. We can certainly look to it as an example of the early church's dogma, but that's about it.