"Jesus never actually says 'I am God'"

Show me one verse where Jesus says the words "I am God." You cannot. He never claimed it. The church claimed it for him later.

Almost no one in the ancient world made identity claims by reciting a title, and a first-century Jew least of all. Jesus makes the claim by action and by loaded language: he forgives sins on his own authority — and the scribes react precisely because that is God's prerogative; he receives worship without stopping it; he says he will sit as judge of every person who has ever lived; he calms a storm with a word. Each of these is something the Hebrew Scriptures reserve to the LORD alone.

Prophets did miracles too. Forgiving sins could just mean announcing that God forgives, like a priest.

The people in the room did not hear it that way. In Mark 2 the objection is "who can forgive sins but God alone?" — and Jesus does not correct the premise; he demonstrates the authority by healing. In John 8 he says "before Abraham was, I am" — taking up the divine name from Exodus — and they immediately reach for stones. In John 10 he says "I and the Father are one" and they say they are stoning him "because you, being a man, make yourself God." Three times, hostile listeners who wanted him dead understood the claim exactly. That is strong evidence it was really being made.

John is the latest Gospel and the most theological. Of course it has the highest claims. The earlier Gospels are more modest.

The pattern is in all four. Mark — the earliest — opens by applying to Jesus a line Isaiah wrote about preparing the way for the LORD, has him walk on the sea and say "it is I" (egō eimi), and ends with him affirming under oath that the court will see the Son of Man seated at God's right hand and coming on the clouds — a direct claim on Daniel 7. Matthew has him receive worship and promise to be present wherever two gather in his name. The letters of Paul, earlier than any Gospel, already apply the Shema itself to Jesus and sing hymns to him as Lord. "High Christology" is not a late overlay; it is the earliest layer we can reach.