There is a profound pattern that prophetically runs through the Gospel of John that is easy to read and not notice if you’re not being guided through the directive and insight of the inspired scriptures. Across a span of the teachings, dialogue, and confrontation, Jesus repeatedly reaches for the deepest, elemental things of human search and quest which places him and the very center of every human need.

Christ is behind each quest, passion, and longing of them. Not merely that He can provide things that satisfy but he himself is the very satisfaction and comfort of all human need. In other words, he is saying that the very principle and the power of each essential necessity of life’s need finds its truest expression in His person. This is the heart of the true Gospel; meaning that Christ should be at the very center core of all human need and satisfaction. Unfortunately has been missed by the most informed biblical scholars and spiritual leaders of our day.

However, this was the heart of the gospel the early fathers who pioneered the christian faith understood to the very core of their being. The categories He inhabits cover the full range of what it means to be human: the physical, the relational, the directional, the spiritual. And behind all of them is a single consistent argument, that the created necessities of natural life were never designed to be ultimate. They were always signposts, always pointing beyond themselves to the One who made them and who alone can satisfy what they can only temporarily address.