Romans 3:25: The KJV correct, most other versions wrong
Oct 21, 2014 9:04:03 GMT
Post by Colossians on Oct 21, 2014 9:04:03 GMT
This material is for the teaching of the Body of Christ, however the author reserves copyright over it.
Forward
Romans 3:25 is among the more difficult to render in the New Testament.
It has thus provided for the KJV translators to humbly demonstrate their academic and intellectual superiority over most, if not all, newcomers.
We have chosen the NIV to represent the non-KJV.
____________________________________________________________
ROMANS 3:25: THE KJV CORRECT, MOST OTHER VERSIONS WRONG
The KJV
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”.
The non-KJV a mess
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished”
The up front unintelligibility here consists in the fact that the “because” (underlined) which introduces the third clause is naturally taken by the reader to be the (more-common and subordinating) conjunction relating (adverbial) “the reason being that ...”, thus relating the (nonsensical) notion that the reason God demonstrated His righteousness was that He chose to not punish sins before the Cross: in the absence of an additional thought which might express why not punishing sins before the Cross would be a reason for subsequently going to the Cross, the sentence simply doesn’t make sense.
And so the translators actually intend a “because” which relates “and this by virtue of the fact that” and which therefore and rather introduces an afterthought, the bulk of which is not actually present in the text:
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, and this by virtue of the fact that in His forbearance He had already left the sins committed beforehand unpunished, which means that given that the Cross was on top of such forbearance, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was indeed righteous.”
The non-KJV therefore supposes a sort of casual ‘in-house’ vernacular on the part of Paul where we are not actually being taught anything other than to fulfil the calling of all good eisegetes: presumptuously join the dots together to produce what we apparently already ‘know’.
The (primary) (grammatical) error responsible for the non-KJV rendering
Following is the Greek-to-English interlinear transcription of the Textus Receptus 1 as it currently appears. Upper case words/morphemes represent direct transcription, lower case words/morphemes attempts by the producers of the work at better aligning things with the grammar and intent, and trailing parentheticals suggested renderings (also by the producers of the work). Note the preposition we have coloured blue, which will be pivotal to our discussion.
1 The Novum Testamentum Graece upon which the non-KJV is essentially based, is at this point identical to the Greek of the Textus Receptus, so there is no issue here with regard to sources.
“WHOM BEFORE-PLACED (purposed) THE
PROPITIATION-place (propitiatory-shelter) THROUGH
THE BELIEF (faith) IN THE OF-Him BLOOD INTO
IN-SHOWing (display) OF-THE JUSTice (righteousness) OF-Him
THROUGH (because-of) THE BESIDE-LETTing (passing-over) OF-THE BEFORE-HAVING-BECOME (having-occurred-before) miss-effects (penalties-of-sins) IN THE tolerance (forbearance) OF-THE God”
We shall express this in English as:
“God sent Christ as a propitiation to be received through faith in His blood, to show His righteousness, through the passing over of past sins in the forbearance of God”.
And we shall condense “through the passing over of past sins in the forbearance of God” to the more-manageable “through the forbearance of God” , (the) forbearance being the overarching essential.
We shall also for the time being omit the phrase “through faith in His blood”, it not being integral to our structural analysis.
Paradigmatically then:
God did A, to show B, through C.
Because then “through” is being used to denote the channel for the doing of A to show B, it can also be thought of as “because of” (note the trailing parenthetical in the interlinear).
But/and it is by virtue of this very fact that the translators have been led to distraction: they have superficially rendered the “because of” as “because” and so have inadvertently converted the preposition “through” (“because of”) to a subordinating conjunction joining two clauses:
God did A, to show B, because He did C.
As a result, a new finite (tensed) verb “did [C]” has been introduced which is not present in the Greek: what rather follows “through” in the Greek is simply a (gerundial) (non-tensed) noun phrase – “the passing over of past sins” – which is in our structural paradigm represented not as “did [C]”, but simply “C”.
The meaning then of the non-KJV is completely different to the Greek: it is saying that C is past tense relative to the doing of A – that because God (earlier) forbore, He (subsequently) did A to show B.
Contrasting, if one says:
God did A, to show B, through C,
the logic expressed is that if ever God is to do A, C is concomitantly required.
The sum of the grammatical-error issue
The non-KJV is essentially saying:
“God sent Christ to the Cross to show His righteousness through the fact of His forbearance (through the fact that He (earlier) forbore)”,
whereas the original text is saying:
“God sent Christ to the Cross to show His righteousness through the (His) forbearance (itself)”
The non-KJV therefore relates only a forbearance for sins committed prior to the Cross, and is thus (errantly) dispensational in outlook.
The original text relates that the forbearance and the Cross are essentially the same thing – that the forbearance exhausts the Cross (and vice versa). It is thus necessarily pitted at the level of the individual (whenever in history such individual might live), and is (accordingly) void of dispensationalism.
Theological and/or logical errors in the non-KJV rendering
Error 1:
The dividing of God’s righteousness into (a supposed) initial forbearance and (a subsequent) (more complete) death-to-self on the Cross, thereby declaring God to possesses (or at least to have possessed) a form of longsuffering that is/was stand-apart from the Cross.
Negation:
If it is not in the Cross then it is not in Christ, and if it is not in Christ then it is not in the power of God (for Christ is the power of God (1 Cor 1:24)). And if it is not in the power of God then it is not in the forbearance of God, for there can be no forbearance of God that does not emanate from the power of God. In short, the Cross was no mere furtherance of the forbearance of God, but the whole of it from start to finish.2
2 See also our work: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.
Error 2:
The irresistible implication that, in some strange way, the Cross constituted relief (for God) from the (supposed) (distinctly-separate) forbearance that led up to it – that the Cross would, in a manner of speaking, put Him out of His misery.
Negation:
We need nothing more than common sense to tell us that ‘putting up with’ is better than dying. The writer to the Hebrews concurs: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).
Error 3:
Dispensationalism: we are apparently supposed to believe that God viewed sins before the Cross differently to sins after the Cross, and in particular, that prior to the Cross God restrained Himself from punishing people for their wrongs.
Negation:
There are so many punishings (of both Jew and Gentile) in the pages of the Old Testament it defies the imagination that anyone could hold to this idea. Consummately, we will remember the oath revealed through David which God made concerning those under Moses who did not walk in faith: “Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest” (Ps 95:11).3
Further, the view is internally inconsistent: one minute we are supposed to believe that God overlooked sins prior to the Cross, the next that if He hadn’t gone to the Cross, He wouldn’t have been able to overlook those same sins. Either He overlooked them or He didn’t – you can’t have it both ways. But as we have indicated, the Cross was neither furtherance of His forbearance nor relief from His forbearance, but the sum of it from start to finish.
Moreover, there is no good reason for Paul at this point in his discourse on the law vs grace to arbitrarily and without notice constrain the application of the Cross only to sins committed prior to it: ecclesiastical synergies aside, if the faith that I possess in Christ is neither initiated nor sustained by the fact that God in Christ has overlooked your sins (and vice versa), how much less will the faith of the either of us be initiated or sustained by any overlooking of sins committed by those who lived before the Cross? And so no such notion would have been presented by Paul, and no such notion is in fact presented: his (soteriological) message is (necessarily) according to principle, not epoch: it is indiscriminately-applicable, personally-applied, and commensurate with the declaration by the writer to the Hebrews, to wit, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to day, and forever” (Heb 13:8).4
Finally, and as we have implied in the above paragraph, there is in fact no distinction between God’s overlooking of sins and His forgiving of them: they are both the exact same thing. For to overlook, is to take away the law, and the law was nailed to the Cross upon which our forgiveness is based. (See Eph 2:15, Col 2:13,14.)
3 See also our work: “Hebrews 4:8: “Jesus”, not “Joshua”.
4 See also our work: “The New Covenant: Jeremiah 31:31-34”.
Reproducing the KJV rendering from the original text
The KJV mirrors the Greek in its essential structure. However it contains certain (lower-level) (additional) differences consisting of alternate words, additions, subtractions, and repositionings, which nevertheless need to be validated. Here is the KJV again, with those differences highlighted in green:
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God […… ];”
We shall therefore begin with the essential structure of the Greek, and in stepwise fashion build up to what the KJV says.
Here is the structure of the Greek again:
God did A, to show B, through C
which once the relevant parameters are passed to it, yields:
“God provided propitiation, to show His righteousness, through His forbearance of past sins.”
___
Because then the propitiation is by virtue of (“through”) the forbearance of past sins, it necessarily relates to the same sins as the forbearance. That is, the Cross is simply the forbearance all rolled into one event.5,6
We may thus move “past sins” from the sub-structure relating forbearance, to the forensically-equivalent sub-structure relating propitiation:
“God provided propitiation [for past sins], to show His righteousness, through His forbearance [……].”
5 This shows that Christ is God.
6 This also accords with the fact that Christ is our sacrifice rather than our substitute. That is, He did not incur a punitive measure on our behalf, but rather bore our iniquities in a very direct-relationship sense in that He refused to bring retaliation against us because of them. That is, He took away the law.6a,6b
6a See also our work: “Christ our sacrifice, not our substitute”
6b See also our work: “The legal proof that Jesus Christ is God”.
___
Because the propitiation relates to all sins regardless of epoch, attributively-positioned “past” is moved to predicative position in order to transform the nuance to “sins that are (forever) past (regardless of when they are committed)”, without violating the grammar:
“God provided propitiation for […] sins [that are past], to show His righteousness, through His forbearance.”
That is, the sense is proclamative rather than dispensational, and in line with the text that leads into it:
[22] “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe”
: (all that believe whenever in history they might live).
And it is of course in line with what the same apostle says elsewhere:
“but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” Phil 3:13
and again:
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” 2 Cor 5:17
: it is reasonable to assume a consistent theology across all the epistles of the same writer.
___
The propitiation is more fully expressed as that which remits sins:
“God provided propitiation for [the remission of] sins that are past, to show His righteousness, through His forbearance.”
___
Because the righteousness of God consists 7 of His propitiatory work, it is simply not possible for Him to “show” His righteousness to any who are not cognisantly in receipt of such propitiation; for the propitiation is “through faith in His blood”. That is, by the time such righteousness might be ready to be (externally) exhibited, it is too late: it has already been (personally) received. Such ‘showing’ therefore can be no mere external exhibit, but must be concomitant with the faith through which the propitiation works: it must declare that which it ‘shows’, both in and in the behalf of him to whom it is ‘shown’.
We thus carry out a two-part transformation at this point:
1. We shift “for the remission of sins that are past” from the sub-structure relating propitiation, to the sub-structure relating (the more general) righteousness under which the propitiation is subsumed:
“God provided propitiation […...], to show His righteousness [for the remission of sins that are past], through His forbearance.”
2. We substitute (advocatory) “declare” for (clinical) “show”:
“God provided propitiation, to […] [declare] His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through His forbearance.”
7 This follows logically from the fact that righteousness must be demonstrated.
___
We have thus arrived at the reconstruction:
“God provided propitiation, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through His forbearance.”
The KJV:
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;”
Conclusion
In referring to “sins that are past” rather than “past sins”, the sense/nuance of the KJV is that all sins, regardless of whether they have occurred prior to the Cross or after the Cross, and regardless of whether they have occurred prior to one's coming to the faith or at any time after one's coming to the faith, are declared forever past and forgotten. That is, the message is authoritative, proclamative, and non-dispensational. It is in fact the message that invokes our Sabbath rest in Christ.
Contrasting, in referring to “sins committed beforehand”, the non-KJV focuses our attention, without prior warning and for no apparent reason, on sins committed only before the advent of the Cross, in the process excluding the majority of those in Christ who will ever live, and shifting our minds away from the glory of the rest we have in Christ and on to carnal timelines.
The KJV presents the full and unmitigated gospel by way of correct grammatical analysis of the original text and the appropriate superimposition of relevant theological and logical constraints. Commensurately, it complies with the immediate context.
The non-KJV is not readily intelligible with regard to its own intent, and presents a (truncated) gospel which is grammatically errant (and therefore erroneously dispensationalist) and detached from (the) relevant theological and logical constraints. Commensurately, it does not comply with the immediate context.
The KJV rendering is scholarly, intelligent, and correct.
The non-KJV rendering is amateurish, unintelligent, and wrong.
Amen.
Forward
Romans 3:25 is among the more difficult to render in the New Testament.
It has thus provided for the KJV translators to humbly demonstrate their academic and intellectual superiority over most, if not all, newcomers.
We have chosen the NIV to represent the non-KJV.
____________________________________________________________
ROMANS 3:25: THE KJV CORRECT, MOST OTHER VERSIONS WRONG
The KJV
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”.
The non-KJV a mess
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished”
The up front unintelligibility here consists in the fact that the “because” (underlined) which introduces the third clause is naturally taken by the reader to be the (more-common and subordinating) conjunction relating (adverbial) “the reason being that ...”, thus relating the (nonsensical) notion that the reason God demonstrated His righteousness was that He chose to not punish sins before the Cross: in the absence of an additional thought which might express why not punishing sins before the Cross would be a reason for subsequently going to the Cross, the sentence simply doesn’t make sense.
And so the translators actually intend a “because” which relates “and this by virtue of the fact that” and which therefore and rather introduces an afterthought, the bulk of which is not actually present in the text:
“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, and this by virtue of the fact that in His forbearance He had already left the sins committed beforehand unpunished, which means that given that the Cross was on top of such forbearance, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was indeed righteous.”
The non-KJV therefore supposes a sort of casual ‘in-house’ vernacular on the part of Paul where we are not actually being taught anything other than to fulfil the calling of all good eisegetes: presumptuously join the dots together to produce what we apparently already ‘know’.
The (primary) (grammatical) error responsible for the non-KJV rendering
Following is the Greek-to-English interlinear transcription of the Textus Receptus 1 as it currently appears. Upper case words/morphemes represent direct transcription, lower case words/morphemes attempts by the producers of the work at better aligning things with the grammar and intent, and trailing parentheticals suggested renderings (also by the producers of the work). Note the preposition we have coloured blue, which will be pivotal to our discussion.
1 The Novum Testamentum Graece upon which the non-KJV is essentially based, is at this point identical to the Greek of the Textus Receptus, so there is no issue here with regard to sources.
“WHOM BEFORE-PLACED (purposed) THE
PROPITIATION-place (propitiatory-shelter) THROUGH
THE BELIEF (faith) IN THE OF-Him BLOOD INTO
IN-SHOWing (display) OF-THE JUSTice (righteousness) OF-Him
THROUGH (because-of) THE BESIDE-LETTing (passing-over) OF-THE BEFORE-HAVING-BECOME (having-occurred-before) miss-effects (penalties-of-sins) IN THE tolerance (forbearance) OF-THE God”
We shall express this in English as:
“God sent Christ as a propitiation to be received through faith in His blood, to show His righteousness, through the passing over of past sins in the forbearance of God”.
And we shall condense “through the passing over of past sins in the forbearance of God” to the more-manageable “through the forbearance of God” , (the) forbearance being the overarching essential.
We shall also for the time being omit the phrase “through faith in His blood”, it not being integral to our structural analysis.
Paradigmatically then:
God did A, to show B, through C.
Because then “through” is being used to denote the channel for the doing of A to show B, it can also be thought of as “because of” (note the trailing parenthetical in the interlinear).
But/and it is by virtue of this very fact that the translators have been led to distraction: they have superficially rendered the “because of” as “because” and so have inadvertently converted the preposition “through” (“because of”) to a subordinating conjunction joining two clauses:
God did A, to show B, because He did C.
As a result, a new finite (tensed) verb “did [C]” has been introduced which is not present in the Greek: what rather follows “through” in the Greek is simply a (gerundial) (non-tensed) noun phrase – “the passing over of past sins” – which is in our structural paradigm represented not as “did [C]”, but simply “C”.
The meaning then of the non-KJV is completely different to the Greek: it is saying that C is past tense relative to the doing of A – that because God (earlier) forbore, He (subsequently) did A to show B.
Contrasting, if one says:
God did A, to show B, through C,
the logic expressed is that if ever God is to do A, C is concomitantly required.
The sum of the grammatical-error issue
The non-KJV is essentially saying:
“God sent Christ to the Cross to show His righteousness through the fact of His forbearance (through the fact that He (earlier) forbore)”,
whereas the original text is saying:
“God sent Christ to the Cross to show His righteousness through the (His) forbearance (itself)”
The non-KJV therefore relates only a forbearance for sins committed prior to the Cross, and is thus (errantly) dispensational in outlook.
The original text relates that the forbearance and the Cross are essentially the same thing – that the forbearance exhausts the Cross (and vice versa). It is thus necessarily pitted at the level of the individual (whenever in history such individual might live), and is (accordingly) void of dispensationalism.
Theological and/or logical errors in the non-KJV rendering
Error 1:
The dividing of God’s righteousness into (a supposed) initial forbearance and (a subsequent) (more complete) death-to-self on the Cross, thereby declaring God to possesses (or at least to have possessed) a form of longsuffering that is/was stand-apart from the Cross.
Negation:
If it is not in the Cross then it is not in Christ, and if it is not in Christ then it is not in the power of God (for Christ is the power of God (1 Cor 1:24)). And if it is not in the power of God then it is not in the forbearance of God, for there can be no forbearance of God that does not emanate from the power of God. In short, the Cross was no mere furtherance of the forbearance of God, but the whole of it from start to finish.2
2 See also our work: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.
Error 2:
The irresistible implication that, in some strange way, the Cross constituted relief (for God) from the (supposed) (distinctly-separate) forbearance that led up to it – that the Cross would, in a manner of speaking, put Him out of His misery.
Negation:
We need nothing more than common sense to tell us that ‘putting up with’ is better than dying. The writer to the Hebrews concurs: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).
Error 3:
Dispensationalism: we are apparently supposed to believe that God viewed sins before the Cross differently to sins after the Cross, and in particular, that prior to the Cross God restrained Himself from punishing people for their wrongs.
Negation:
There are so many punishings (of both Jew and Gentile) in the pages of the Old Testament it defies the imagination that anyone could hold to this idea. Consummately, we will remember the oath revealed through David which God made concerning those under Moses who did not walk in faith: “Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest” (Ps 95:11).3
Further, the view is internally inconsistent: one minute we are supposed to believe that God overlooked sins prior to the Cross, the next that if He hadn’t gone to the Cross, He wouldn’t have been able to overlook those same sins. Either He overlooked them or He didn’t – you can’t have it both ways. But as we have indicated, the Cross was neither furtherance of His forbearance nor relief from His forbearance, but the sum of it from start to finish.
Moreover, there is no good reason for Paul at this point in his discourse on the law vs grace to arbitrarily and without notice constrain the application of the Cross only to sins committed prior to it: ecclesiastical synergies aside, if the faith that I possess in Christ is neither initiated nor sustained by the fact that God in Christ has overlooked your sins (and vice versa), how much less will the faith of the either of us be initiated or sustained by any overlooking of sins committed by those who lived before the Cross? And so no such notion would have been presented by Paul, and no such notion is in fact presented: his (soteriological) message is (necessarily) according to principle, not epoch: it is indiscriminately-applicable, personally-applied, and commensurate with the declaration by the writer to the Hebrews, to wit, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to day, and forever” (Heb 13:8).4
Finally, and as we have implied in the above paragraph, there is in fact no distinction between God’s overlooking of sins and His forgiving of them: they are both the exact same thing. For to overlook, is to take away the law, and the law was nailed to the Cross upon which our forgiveness is based. (See Eph 2:15, Col 2:13,14.)
3 See also our work: “Hebrews 4:8: “Jesus”, not “Joshua”.
4 See also our work: “The New Covenant: Jeremiah 31:31-34”.
Reproducing the KJV rendering from the original text
The KJV mirrors the Greek in its essential structure. However it contains certain (lower-level) (additional) differences consisting of alternate words, additions, subtractions, and repositionings, which nevertheless need to be validated. Here is the KJV again, with those differences highlighted in green:
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God […… ];”
We shall therefore begin with the essential structure of the Greek, and in stepwise fashion build up to what the KJV says.
Here is the structure of the Greek again:
God did A, to show B, through C
which once the relevant parameters are passed to it, yields:
“God provided propitiation, to show His righteousness, through His forbearance of past sins.”
___
Because then the propitiation is by virtue of (“through”) the forbearance of past sins, it necessarily relates to the same sins as the forbearance. That is, the Cross is simply the forbearance all rolled into one event.5,6
We may thus move “past sins” from the sub-structure relating forbearance, to the forensically-equivalent sub-structure relating propitiation:
“God provided propitiation [for past sins], to show His righteousness, through His forbearance [……].”
5 This shows that Christ is God.
6 This also accords with the fact that Christ is our sacrifice rather than our substitute. That is, He did not incur a punitive measure on our behalf, but rather bore our iniquities in a very direct-relationship sense in that He refused to bring retaliation against us because of them. That is, He took away the law.6a,6b
6a See also our work: “Christ our sacrifice, not our substitute”
6b See also our work: “The legal proof that Jesus Christ is God”.
___
Because the propitiation relates to all sins regardless of epoch, attributively-positioned “past” is moved to predicative position in order to transform the nuance to “sins that are (forever) past (regardless of when they are committed)”, without violating the grammar:
“God provided propitiation for […] sins [that are past], to show His righteousness, through His forbearance.”
That is, the sense is proclamative rather than dispensational, and in line with the text that leads into it:
[22] “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe”
: (all that believe whenever in history they might live).
And it is of course in line with what the same apostle says elsewhere:
“but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” Phil 3:13
and again:
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” 2 Cor 5:17
: it is reasonable to assume a consistent theology across all the epistles of the same writer.
___
The propitiation is more fully expressed as that which remits sins:
“God provided propitiation for [the remission of] sins that are past, to show His righteousness, through His forbearance.”
___
Because the righteousness of God consists 7 of His propitiatory work, it is simply not possible for Him to “show” His righteousness to any who are not cognisantly in receipt of such propitiation; for the propitiation is “through faith in His blood”. That is, by the time such righteousness might be ready to be (externally) exhibited, it is too late: it has already been (personally) received. Such ‘showing’ therefore can be no mere external exhibit, but must be concomitant with the faith through which the propitiation works: it must declare that which it ‘shows’, both in and in the behalf of him to whom it is ‘shown’.
We thus carry out a two-part transformation at this point:
1. We shift “for the remission of sins that are past” from the sub-structure relating propitiation, to the sub-structure relating (the more general) righteousness under which the propitiation is subsumed:
“God provided propitiation […...], to show His righteousness [for the remission of sins that are past], through His forbearance.”
2. We substitute (advocatory) “declare” for (clinical) “show”:
“God provided propitiation, to […] [declare] His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through His forbearance.”
7 This follows logically from the fact that righteousness must be demonstrated.
___
We have thus arrived at the reconstruction:
“God provided propitiation, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through His forbearance.”
The KJV:
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;”
Conclusion
In referring to “sins that are past” rather than “past sins”, the sense/nuance of the KJV is that all sins, regardless of whether they have occurred prior to the Cross or after the Cross, and regardless of whether they have occurred prior to one's coming to the faith or at any time after one's coming to the faith, are declared forever past and forgotten. That is, the message is authoritative, proclamative, and non-dispensational. It is in fact the message that invokes our Sabbath rest in Christ.
Contrasting, in referring to “sins committed beforehand”, the non-KJV focuses our attention, without prior warning and for no apparent reason, on sins committed only before the advent of the Cross, in the process excluding the majority of those in Christ who will ever live, and shifting our minds away from the glory of the rest we have in Christ and on to carnal timelines.
The KJV presents the full and unmitigated gospel by way of correct grammatical analysis of the original text and the appropriate superimposition of relevant theological and logical constraints. Commensurately, it complies with the immediate context.
The non-KJV is not readily intelligible with regard to its own intent, and presents a (truncated) gospel which is grammatically errant (and therefore erroneously dispensationalist) and detached from (the) relevant theological and logical constraints. Commensurately, it does not comply with the immediate context.
The KJV rendering is scholarly, intelligent, and correct.
The non-KJV rendering is amateurish, unintelligent, and wrong.
Amen.