Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
After having taught the faithful that they had been regenerated by the word of God, he now exhorts them to lead a life corresponding with their birth. For if we live in the Spirit, we ought also to walk in the Spirit, as Paul says. (Galatians 5:25.) It is not, then, sufficient for us to have been once called by the Lord, except we live as new creatures.
Wherefore, laying aside all malice,.... Since the persons the apostle writes to were born again, and therefore ought to love one another, he exhorts them to the disuse of such vices as were disagreeable to their character as regenerate men, and contrary brotherly love; he dissuades them from them, and advises to "lay them aside", either as weights and burdens, which it was not fit...
Here we are first directed what to lay aside, in order to our fruitful and profitable entertainment of the word of God, namely, these five sins, malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and evil-speaking. Whence note in general, That if any sin, much more if many sins, be kept close and lie dormant within us, they will certainly hinder the efficacy of the word upon us.