"But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealous and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, "I follow Apollos,' are you not being merely human?"
Paul's finally come back around to the first thing he criticized the Corinthian church for in chapter 1: Following godly leaders, not God himself, and arguing about which leader was the best.
Chapter 2 mostly talked about God's wisdom versus the world's wisdom, and how people who follow the world's wisdom cannot understand God's wisdom or have the gifts that come with it. And here is the Corinthian church behaving as if they they have not been transformed by God, as if they don't believe, as if they do not have God's spirit living within them.. They are believers, don't get me wrong. He said in chapter 1 that they are. They're not in danger of "losing their salvation". We'll see in vs 15, though, that they ARE in danger of losing something.
Milk, not solid food. Paul has some pretty good metaphors in this chapter, and this is one. Babies cannot eat solid food. They have no teeth. They can suck, but lack the coordination to chew or to safely swallow anything but real food. They are completely dependent on the person feeding them.
These church leaders - they are the ones feeding the church spiritual truths. But clearly this church, like a baby, is completely dependent on the leaders feeding them, which is why they are divided into which leader gives them what they prefer. If they were spiritually mature, they wouldn't be so dependent on the words of church leaders (throwback to chapter 1, second half, which talked about God using the weakness/foolishness of leaders' words to convey spiritual truth). Words are cheap. God uses words, but we don't need to listen to podcasts, watch sermons and YouTube videos, or read Christian books to comprehend the real meat of the gospel, because we already have the spirit of God.
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