The prologue of John’s Gospel serves as an overture to the entire narrative, much like a musical prelude that introduces themes which later unfold in full. It opens by directing our attention to the one John calls “the Word”: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”

The word translated “with” is strikingly intimate. It can mean “toward,” even suggesting two persons face-to-face. Eugene Peterson paraphrases, “The Word present to God, God present to the Word.” Before anything existed, the Word was turned toward God, in living communion.

So, as our minds are taken back before anything existed, we see two persons in a relationship. One is called the Word, the other God. Later, John names them more fully: the Word is the Son, and God is the Father. He pictures them in deep closeness: the Son “in the bosom of the Father,” or, as another translation renders it, “close to the Father’s heart.” So even before God made the world, relationship was at the very centre of who God is.  God himself is persons in communion.  That’s who he is.  

Here John turns us toward the eternal relation between Father and Son. Love is not yet named, but the unfolding gospel story makes clear that love is the beating heart of this fellowship. The story John tells flows from that eternal communion of love. 

The story unfolds in time when the Word became flesh and entered history. He came as one of us to draw us into the communion that is God’s own life—the communion we now share through the Spirit, the third divine person, who descended upon Jesus like a dove and whom he later promises to us.