In The Beginning Was The Word

 John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

 Of all four Gospels, the Gospel of John is certainly the most unique. In fact, John Calvin made the interesting comment that if Matthew, Mark, and Luke exhibit Jesus' body, John's Gospel "exhibits his soul."
And in this exhibition, John starts off with a description of Jesus Christ in which he says four things about Him.

1) Jesus is the Word. In Greek, Jesus is the logos, the cause or reason for everything that exists.

2) Jesus existed in the beginning. Before time began, Jesus was.

3) Jesus was with God. Although Jesus is divine Himself, He exists in a Trinitarian relationship with God the Father.

4) Jesus is God. He contains all the attributes and characteristics of God the Father.

In the beginning--of all time and created existence, for this Word gave it being ( John 1:3 John 1:10 ); therefore, "before the world was" ( John 17:5 John 17:24 ); or, from all eternity.
was the Word--He who is to God what man's word is to himself, the manifestation or expression of himself to those without him. now for ever consecrated title of Christ, this is not the place to speak. It occurs only in the writings of this seraphic apostle. was with God--having a conscious personal existence distinct from God (as one is from the person he is "with"), but inseparable from Him and associated with Him ( John 1:18 , John 17:5 , 1 John 1:2 ), where "THE FATHER" is used in the same sense as "GOD" here.

was God--in substance and essence GOD; or was possessed of essential or proper divinity. Thus, each of these brief but pregnant statements is the complement of the other, correcting any misapprehensions which the others might occasion.

Was the Word eternal? It was not the eternity of "the Father," but of a conscious personal existence distinct from Him and associated with Him. Was the Word thus "with God?" It was not the distinctness and the fellowship of another being, as if there were more Gods than one, but of One who was Himself God--in such sense that the absolute unity of the God head, the great principle of all religion, is only transferred from the region of shadowy abstraction to the region of essential life and love. But why all this definition? Not to give us any abstract information about certain mysterious distinctions in the Godhead, but solely to let the reader know who it was that in the fullness of time "was made flesh." After each verse, then, the reader must say, "It was He who is thus, and thus, and thus described, who was made flesh."

In Him was life--essentially and originally, as the previous verses show to be the meaning. Thus He is the Living Word, or, as He is called in 1 John 1:1 1 John 1:2 , "the Word of Life."
the life. The light of men--All that in men which is true light--knowledge, integrity, intelligent, willing subjection to God, love to Him and to their fellow creatures, wisdom, purity, holy joy, rational happiness--all this "light of men" has its fountain in the essential original "life" of "the Word" ( 1 John 1:5-7 Psalms 36:9 ).

Shine in darkness, &c.--in this dark, fallen world, or in mankind "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death," with no ability to find the way either of truth or of holiness. In this thick darkness, and consequent intellectual and moral obliquity, "the light of the Word" shine--by all the rays whether of natural or revealed teaching which men (apart from the Incarnation of the Word) are favored with. the darkness comprehended it not--did not take it in, a brief summary of the effect of all the strivings of this unincarnate Word throughout this wide world from the beginning, and a hint of the necessity of His putting on flesh, if any recovery of men was to be effected ( 1 Corinthians 1:21 ).