John 1:1 ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with (face to face with) God, and what God was the Word was.'
‘In the beginning.' This undoubtedly has in mind the words of Genesis 1:1 (‘in the beginning God created'), and yet it goes back beyond the moment of creation. This is where men's minds have often wandered as they have thought back to the beginning of all things, and they have striven to understand. We could paraphrase loosely, ‘in the beginning before time began' or even as ‘in eternity past'. The Jews had felt that they had the answer through revelation. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' But John is taking us back beyond that. ‘In the beginning', he says, ‘before the world was ever created, the Word was already there in His eternal existence'. (Compare John 17:5). Here the Greek idea of the Logos is being given Hebrew clothes.
The verb ‘was' sums up the eternity of the Word. When all else began the Word ‘was already in perpetual existence'. He Who came to bring light to men pre-existed creation. For when all was created He was already there, and, as John 1:3 adds, was the source of the creation of all things (Colossians 1:15-17). As we learn later He was the ‘I am' (John 8:58).
‘The Word was.' This expression is similar to that by which God revealed Himself to Moses, for in Exodus 3:14 God revealed Himself as the ‘I am', the ‘One Who is' (see John 8:58). At that point the One Who was in existence from the beginning was stressing that He was also then present to act. Here in John's Gospel the thought is in a sense in reverse. The One Who has been here among us, and acting in history in the life of Jesus Christ, says John, is also the One Who ‘was' in the beginning, the One Who could speak of ‘the glory which I had with You before the world was' (John 17:5).