What was God doing before He created the universe?
Before the universe existed, God was not idle and not alone. He was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and between the Father and the Son there was an eternal fellowship of love, delight, and communion that had no beginning and needed no world to sustain it.
Hamilton Smith sets the stage with John 1:1–2:
Hamilton SmithThe great theme of the introductory verses of the Gospel of John is the glory of the Person of Christ as the eternal Word. We are first carried back in thought into eternity to learn His glory as a divine Person... In the beginning of everything that had a beginning, the Word was, not "began". "'In the beginning was the Word' is the formal expression that the Word had no beginning."
And then, on those four words "the Word was with God":
Not only is the Word an eternal Person, He is also a distinct Person in the Godhead. The "with" denotes, moreover, not only distinctness of Person, but also intercommunion between the Persons in the Godhead. Then we are told that "the Word was God" — a divine Person.
Before time, before any act of making — there was already intercommunion. There were already Persons in relationship.
J.G. Bellett meditates on John 1:18 — "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father" — and draws from it the central answer:
J.G. BellettIt was once asked me, Had the Father no bosom till the Babe was born in Bethlehem? Indeed, fully sure I am, as that inquiry suggests, He had from all eternity. The bosom of the Father was an eternal habitation, enjoyed by the Son, in the ineffable delight of the Father — "the hiding-place of love," as one has called it, "of inexpressible love which is beyond glory; for glory may be revealed, this cannot."
Before the universe existed, there was this: a Father's bosom, and a Son dwelling in it. And Bellett presses deeper still:
As He lay in the bosom through eternity, we need not — for we cannot — speak of this joy. That bosom was "the hiding-place of love"; and the joy that attended that love is as unutterable as itself.
The eternal Son was also, before creation, the ground of all God's purposes:
In the bosom of the Father He was. There lay the eternal life with the Father; God, and yet with God. In counsel He was then set up ere the highest part of the dust of the earth was made. Then, He was the Creator of all things in their first order and beauty; afterwards, in their state of mischief and ruin, the Reconciler of all things; and by-and-by, in their regathering, He will be the Heir of all things.
L.M. Grant, commenting on Proverbs 8, traces how the Son's own voice describes what He was doing before the world:
L.M. Grant"I have been established from everlasting, from the beginning, before there was ever an earth" (v. 23). As Moses writes in Psalm 90:2, "From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God."
And then the Son speaks of the delight that filled that eternity:
Creation's many amazing wonders were accomplished while Christ, the Wisdom of God, was with the Father, as a "Master Craftsman" engaged in bringing all things into being (v. 30). He was daily God's delight, rejoicing always before Him, just as is confirmed in God's words from heaven on two occasions, when the Lord Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and when He was transfigured on the holy mountain.
"Daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" — before the first sunrise, before the first star, before the laying of the earth's foundations.
F.B. Hole opens up John 17:5, where Jesus on the night of His betrayal prays: "Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." The Son in His deepest humiliation reaches back to claim what He possessed before time:
F.B. HoleHe repeats His request for glory — that particular glory which He had along with the Father before the world came into being... As glorified with Him we are to behold His glory, which will witness to us for ever, not only the perfection of all that He wrought in Manhood, but also of the Father's love, of which He had been the Object from all eternity.
"The Object of the Father's love from all eternity" — that is what was happening before creation. And J.N. Darby, in a statement among his papers, crystallized the same conviction: "I hold it vital to hold the Sonship before the worlds. It is the truth."
Colonel Jacob, reflecting on John 15–17, draws out the staggering implication — that believers are invited into this:
Colonel JacobWhen you come in your soul to the title "The Father," then you have more even than what is stated above. That something more is that you have entered into what the Father is to the Son, and what the Son is to the Father outside the interests of this world, outside of everything that goes on down here.
Synthesis
Before the universe existed, God was not waiting. He was not gathering materials or rehearsing His plans in solitude. He was — as He always is — the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in a communion of love that has no beginning. The Son lay in the Father's bosom. The Father delighted in the Son. The Son rejoiced before the Father. These are not conditions that creation caused — they are the eternal reality that creation only reflects.
When God did create, it was not from need but from the overflow of that love. And when John says "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18), the present tense is not accidental: He declared the Father as one who still, eternally, dwells there. Bellett calls it "the hiding-place of love — of inexpressible love which is beyond glory; for glory may be revealed, this cannot."
Before creation, God was being — in the fullest possible sense — Father loving Son, Son rejoicing in Father, the Spirit proceeding in that eternal fellowship.