Malice in the Bible

Malice in the Bible is the settled disposition of the heart to wish or do evil to others, a deep-seated ill will that delights in harm. Unlike a flash of anger, malice is a cultivated hostility, and Scripture treats it as a sin to be decisively put away by those who belong to Christ. Again and again the New Testament lists malice among the works of the old, unredeemed life that the believer must abandon. Paul commands a clean break with it: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice" (Ephesians 4:31). To the Colossians he writes the same, urging them to "put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth" (Colossians 3:8). Malice belongs to the garment of the old self that must be stripped off. Paul also reminds Titus that malice once marked us all, for we too were once "passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another" (Titus 3:3), until the kindness of God appeared. Peter likewise urges believers to "put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander" so that they may grow up into salvation (1 Peter 2:1). Malice has no place in the new life God gives. Paul even ties malice to spiritual immaturity and the corrupted heart. He calls the church to celebrate "not with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:8), and pleads, "do not be children in your thinking... but in evil be infants" (1 Corinthians 14:20). Malice also appears in his catalog of a debased mind, listing those "full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness" (Romans 1:29). The gospel calls us instead to sincerity, kindness, and love.