“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander" (1 Peter 2:1).Every Christian undergoes a holy cleansing that takes place from conversion all the way to when he is at home with the Lord. This process of "holy cleansing" is known as sanctification. A fuller definition of sanctification would be "the process of God’s grace by which the believer is separated from sin and becomes dedicated to God’s righteousness."
In this passage (2:1-3), Peter wants his readers to live sanctified lives. And he writes about three ways in which the believer can live a continuously sanctified life. The first of these he takes up deals with renouncing and putting away sin. Hence, you have Peter beginning this passage with the verse above, “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”
He begins this passage on the believer's sanctification by commanding his readers to put away sin from their lives. They are to abandon sin, reject sin, and put it far from them.
And as you can see here, he gives a list of five things to put away, The kind of “putting away” he is referring to is putting something away for good. In the Greek, the command “put away” denotes something like “taking off and laying aside old clothes.” So Peter is picturing Christians taking these sins “off” like you would with old clothes, and then casting them far away.
That’s what you do with old clothes that are no longer wearable—you take them off and put them in the garbage. That’s what Peter says to do with these sins—to renounce them, to put them away from us, to stop wearing them, to be rid of them all together.
But what is it about those that Peter names in this verse? Why does he say that these sins are those that we should cast away? Well, notice that the sins Peter says we should cast away are sins that affect relationships with people, namely people in the church. Peter isn’t listing these here in random order, or just because he thinks these are worse than say, adultery or stealing. He lists these here because they are sins that will harm our fellowship with other Christians.
And renouncing these sins are absolutely essential to our sanctification—because sanctification cannot be done alone. Sanctification is meant to be done in the Christian community, the church! If we have these sins present in our lives, we are hindering our own sanctification and the sanctification of others. These are sins that will wreck and destroy a local fellowship.
The first of these in the list is malice.
Malice is best defined as “the intention or desire to do evil.” It is like premeditated murder—it is planning on committing sin. Malice is a grave sin because it is the intention and desire to commit sin before we even do (which by the way, is committing sin already).
If we intend to gossip about a church member, or say something along the lines of "Man the next time I see them, I’m gonna . . .” Or if we intend to mistreat someone and disrespect them in the church, then we have a problem with malice. If we intend to speak harshly with someone in the fellowship, or desire to say things to them that would not build them up, we have an issue with malice. This intention to do evil to another member of the body of Christ should not be even named among the redeemed, for it was from this sin (and many others) that we were redeemed (Col. 3:7-8). Malice is a force that can destroy Christian fellowship. We must put it away and cast it far from us.
So what about you? Do you happen to notice even slightly that this sin may be present in your life? Does malice currently affect the way you view others? Pray now that God would help you to value others as He does, and that God would create in you a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within you.
Seeking Christ,
Bro. Brandon G. B.
Bro. Brandon is the Associate Pastor
of Ohio Valley Baptist Church. His
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