Man is spirit, soul, and body.
In the beginning, when God created man, He breathed into him and man became a living soul.
At the end, the unsaved man cast into the lake of fire will be only a soul—no spirit, no body.
Thus we may say: man is fundamentally a soul, sustained by the spirit and interacting with the physical world through the body.
The order of creation was spirit first, then soul, then body.
The soul proceeds from the spirit and receives life from the spirit.
To live by the spirit is life; to live by the flesh is death—and the soul dies.
Consider the analogy:
The spirit is like air,
the soul like water,
the body like earth.
You see this reflected in the bloodstream:
Red blood cells are earth (body),
white blood cells are water (soul),
blood plasma is air (spirit).
Man, therefore, is a vessel from outermost to innermost:
The body is the temple courts,
the soul is the altar,
the spirit is the holy of holies.
A child of God, born again, has Christ dwelling in him—God in a human vessel.
Christ is like the ark of the covenant.
In Christ dwell the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Christ is Adonai, the Almighty God, in whom the three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—perfectly abide.
This is the mystery Paul declared in Colossians 1:27:
“To them God has chosen to makes known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (NIV)