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

The Peril of Falling Away

6 Therefore let us go on^[a] toward perfection,^[b] leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God,^(A)

On Divisions in the Corinthian Church

3 And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people but rather as fleshly, as infants in Christ.^{(A) 2} I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready,^{(B) 3} for you are still fleshly. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling^[a] among you, are you not fleshly and behaving according to human inclinations?^(C)

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

¹³ for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness.

³ Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or enslaved to much wine; they are to teach what is good,^{(A) 4} so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,

¹⁶ Let the word of Christ^[a] dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.^[b](A)

³⁸ He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our ancestors, and he received living oracles to give to us.^(A)

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