¹² For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again ^(A)the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need ^(B)milk, not solid food,

6 Therefore ^(A)let us leave ^(B)the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance ^(C)from dead works and of faith toward God,

Divisions in the Church

3 But I, brothers,^[a] could not address you as ^(A)spiritual people, but as ^(B)people of the flesh, as ^(C)infants in Christ. ^2 (D)I fed you with milk, not solid food, for ^(E)you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³ for you are still of the flesh. For while there is ^(F)jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

^2 (A)Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual ^(B)milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—

¹³ for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is ^(A)a child.

^3 (A)Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, ^(B)not slanderers ^(C)or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, ⁴ and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,

³⁸ This is the one ^(A)who was in the congregation in the wilderness with ^(B)the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. ^(C)He received ^(D)living ^(E)oracles to give to us.

²³ Now in those days the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God; so was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed, ^(A)both by David and by Absalom.