I understand how some Bibles translate John 1:1 but not all Bibles translate this verse the same. This debate, how John 1:1 should be translated has been going on for centuries. It didn't start in our time. We all must make our choice of which translation is the accurate translation.
You and others who believe as you do, believe God is the Word, you don't believe that the Only Begotten Son of God is the Word.
Technically, what John 1 says is that "the Word was God." To reverse this may be true in a sense, but it confuses the point. We identify the source of the Word 1st, who is God. And then we reference the Word that proceeds from God, the source.
1 John 1.1 ...and the Word was God.
This identifies the Word as originating from God and as being God both. So there is no question that the Word, proceeding from God, is in fact God Himself. It is, as it were, an extension of God's own Person, to be depicted within the realm of finite men, so that we can appreciate God in a revelation that we can understand.
These two statements don't say the same thing. The Only Begotten Son of God existed in heaven with his Father who is God before the Only Begotten Son of God who is the Word became human.
The problem is, of course, our disagreement here. I don't see the Son of God except in his pre-incarnate form, as the Word of God. Did the Son of God then preexist his pre-human form? Of course!
But the issue is not whether the Son of God preexisted the incarnation, but in what form he existed before the incarnation. I believe he preexisted his incarnation not in the form of man, but only in the form of the Word of God.
The Word of God proceeded from eternity. Therefore, what came to appear as the Son of God existed beforehand in eternity, but not in the form of man.
So I identify the Son of God as an eternal being who can only be identified as such, after the incarnation, in the form of man, and previously existing not as a man but as the Word of God. I hope you can understand my position here?
Now that the Only Begotten Son of God is back in heaven, he is still the Only Begotten Son of God who is the Word but God has rewarded his Only Begotten Son with immortality and inherited incorruption, two things the Only Begotten Son of God didn't have before he became human or while he was human but received from God his Father after he resurrected his Only Begotten Son from the dead. God has always been immortal and incorruptible it's not something he is rewarded with or given to him.
Of course! God could never have bestowed immortality on His Son, until His Son actually evolved from the Word of God to the Son of God, becoming a man. Prior to becoming a man, Jesus had not been designated as the Son of God, although he had indeed existed beforehand as the Word of God.
Until Jesus was actually designated the "Son of God" Jesus could not have been made immortal, because he had to be mortal before he could be made immortal! Certainly Jesus had been sinless, eternal, and divine. But becoming "immortal" has the sense of glorification, which is a kind of crowning gift upon men who are entitled to live forever in God's good pleasure.
Christ came to do a work for which he also would receive God's good pleasure for eternity. So I of course would at least partly agree with you.
But I do not agree that the Son of God was designated as such before the incarnation, unless it is merely expressed prophetically, as God's plan to eventually turn the Word of God into a man. This, of course, He did.