1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men."
John 1:1-4
The third phrase in 1, 'the Word was God' underlines the truth that as well as being distinct as to His Person from God the Father, Christ is God the Son. Community of essence is the thought, as distinction of persons is the thought in the second phrase. The AV rendering here is the only legitimate rendering of the Greek, and indeed is the only one that makes sense in the context of what John is saying. It is not too much to say that the deity of Christ is so essential in the Christian scheme of things that we can assert that unless Christ is God there can be no salvation. For atonement, which is the heart of salvation, requires Jesus to be God as well as man. What we mean is this: Atonement, if it is really to take place, must take place in man's life and from man's side, for it is man who has sinned. But for atonement to be possible, it must be made by God, since it is something so incommensurable and infinite that no mere man could ever accomplish it. The agonising paradox, in which atonement must come necessarily from man's side, and is possible only from God's, is resolved once for all in the mystery of the Person of Christ as the God-man, uniting two natures, divine and human, in one Person. This is the measure of the importance of John's statement here.
In this sublime and mysterious teaching that John gives here, he is intent on bringing us right through to ultimate reality. It is not possible to go further back than this, but is it not wondrously comforting and reassuring to find out that at the ultimate heart of all existence and all meaning there is the Person of Christ. How wonderful to get through and find that ultimate reality has a smile on its face, and compassion, and pity, and love!