The Architecture of the Spirit: The Imago Dei

Imago Dei. Latin for "the Image of God."

We've been told since childhood that humanity was made in God's image. Every Christian counselor learns early in training that man is a three-part being, comprised of spirit, soul, and body. Most are taught that the soul contains the mind, will, and emotions. This tripartite model has become common knowledge within the Church.

Yet despite its popularity, it remains shallow and largely unrooted in the biblical text. Scripture, when examined more closely, offers a much deeper vision of what it means to be made in the image of God. To understand the human person rightly, one must see that we are not merely three separate components, spirit, soul, and body, but three distinct intelligences interwoven into one indivisible whole. This reflects, in miniature, the mystery of the Triune God.

When the Creator declared, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness," the plurality in the divine voice reveals the counsel of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, working in unison to craft a being who would mirror the richness of Their nature. In the same way that God is one Being in three Persons, humanity is one being with three intelligences, meant to function in unity under divine order. The human spirit, soul, and body are not mechanical parts but living intelligences, interdependent and distinct, designed to echo the harmony of their Maker.

The mind, will, and emotions are not housed exclusively in the soul. Scripture reveals that each dimension of man, the spirit, the soul, and the body, possesses its own capacity to know, choose, and feel. The spirit of man is the innermost intelligence, eternal and God-breathed, capable of independent thought and emotion. Paul affirms this when he writes, "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?" The spirit has its own knowledge, separate from the soul and body.

Perhaps nowhere is this distinction more explicit than in Paul's teaching on prayer. Writing to the Corinthians, he says, "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding." Here Paul draws a clear line between the spirit and the mind. When he prays in tongues, his spirit is actively engaged in prayer, communing with God, interceding, worshiping, yet his mind, his understanding, remains uninformed. The spirit is praying, but the soul is not privy to what's going on. This is not a malfunction. It is proof that the spirit operates with its own intelligence, separate from the faculties of the soul. The spirit knows things the mind does not. It perceives realities the intellect cannot grasp. It speaks a language the soul has never learned.

In Psalm 42, we glimpse an interior dialogue in which the spirit addresses the soul: "Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God." Here the spirit, still tethered to divine perspective, speaks with clarity to the soul caught in sorrow. This is no poetic flourish. It is a functional distinction. The spirit can correct the soul, call it upward, and remind it of the truth.

This capacity is not rhetorical. In Psalm 42, the soul and spirit act independently. The soul sinks into despondency, overtaken by its emotional flux and psychological weight. The spirit, by contrast, maintains alignment with heaven, appealing to the soul to return to trust. The soul remains the seat of personal identity, where memory, emotion, and rationality converge. Yet without the spirit to govern it, the soul defaults to fear and self-pity, often rising to assert dominion it was never meant to hold. In such moments, the soul contends for leadership. It does not easily yield to the voice of the spirit. This contest within man is at the heart of so much interior struggle and spiritual confusion.

The body, too, exhibits intelligence. Through instincts, impulses, and physiological responses, it expresses a type of will, and even a rudimentary form of emotion. Jesus makes this distinction in Gethsemane when He says, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." The flesh here is not evil, but frail, subject to limitation and unredeemed inertia. The body experiences pleasure and pain, attraction and aversion. These are not merely physical reactions. They are emotional expressions at the somatic level. Though often dismissed, the body's voice must be acknowledged in the integrated anthropology of Scripture. The whole person, spirit, soul, and body, is involved in perception, decision-making, and spiritual responsiveness.

According to the divine blueprint, the spirit was intended to govern the other two. As the part of man that communes directly with God, the spirit is meant to lead with revelation, bearing divine light for the whole being. "The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart." This searchlight is not cold intellect but luminous discernment, an inner knowing that seeks to align all things to God's truth. When the spirit leads, the soul finds its clarity and the body moves in peace. Harmony is restored and the image of God becomes radiant.

However, in our fallen condition, this order has been inverted. The soul, especially in the modern West, has claimed the throne. We prize intellect above insight, analysis above anointing. Reason has become king, and the spirit has been dismissed, relegated to the margins as a relic of mysticism. Among the educated elite, the spirit has been silenced by the soul's sophistication. In such a climate, the body becomes little more than a machine responding to soul-level inputs, cravings, ambitions, anxieties, without the guidance of the spirit. This is the great disorder of our age.

Paul alludes to this war in his epistle to the Galatians: "Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." James speaks directly to the chaotic wisdom that results when the soul leads without the Spirit: "This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic." The human spirit must be reawakened. It must rise and reclaim its rightful position as the governing intelligence of the person, under the Lordship of the Holy Spirit.

When we cultivate a life led by the spirit, under the influence of the Spirit of God, the soul and body begin to fall into divine order. The soul learns to process and yield. The body learns to submit and follow. The integrated self becomes a vessel fit for calling, and the image of God is restored in function as well as form. This is not merely theology. It is spiritual anatomy.

In light of the inner temple, this distinction becomes luminous. It is the spirit alone that enters that secret place. The body cannot enter. The soul cannot govern there. Only the spirit seeks Christ in the hidden chamber. As Paul wrote, "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?" The Inner Room is not accessed by intellect, emotion, or biology. It is a domain reserved for the spirit, the deepest part of man, where the voice of God is heard and the image of God begins to shine again.

To live from the spirit is not to deny the soul or despise the body. It is to restore the order that was lost. It is to allow the lamp of the Lord to illumine the whole person, so that we might walk as God intended, fully integrated, fully alive, fully His. This is the architecture of the Imago Dei, not three disconnected parts, but three harmonious intelligences reflecting the glory of the Triune God.

When the spirit leads, we do not become less human. We become more. We become what we were always meant to be: living temples, radiating the presence of the One who made us in His image.

Pastor Scot