“But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.”
“Malice” is the third sin to put off like dirty clothes.
“malice”
“Malice” is the desire to hurt others. This sin is badness in quality (opposite of excellence), a vicious character (Rom. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:8; 14:20; Eph. 4:31; Tit. 3:3; 1 Pet. 2:1; 2:16). It is the quality of wickedness, with the implication of that which is harmful and damaging. “Malice” is a feeling of hostility and strong dislike, with a possible implication of desiring to harm — “hateful feeling.” “Together with every hateful feeling” (Eph. 4.31).
“Malice” is the word for bad, badness; it is the desire to hurt others. Malice is vice in all its forms. It is a bad heart, a mind oriented to evil and spite. It is bent on harming other people.
Malice conceals anger and wrath. It also may be congealed anger — anger that is carried along for a period of time. This anger tries to get even after allowing anger to lie in the mind and after explosions of rage. It is the ill-will remaining in the heart or poisonous thinking toward others. Malice loves to emit its septic bilge into hurting others. We should put off the desire to hurt others like a dirty garment.
Principle:
Malice is the desire to hurt others, a form of depravity that directs evil at others.
Application:
Malice is a form of sublimation. It is the desire to poke someone in the nose or slap them silly. When anger no longer works, and tantrums get attention, malicious people turn to behavior patterns by which, in a depraved sense, they try to hurt others. This sin is like drug addiction, where they use substitutes for their frustrations. It is also how people become addicted to speed and acid.
A woman who would never think of getting into promiscuity becomes angry at her husband. First, she gets mad at him and then throws tantrums. That does not work. Now she is desperate. What can she do? The best way she can hurt her husband is to have an affair. This wife enters into this affair not because she loves or even likes this person; she does it because she wants to hurt her husband.
There is a deadly sequence that begins with anger, anger becomes wrath, and wrath becomes malice.
