The King James Version gets Romans 5:18 wrong!

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So I'll go through this and explain what's going on and why the King James got it wrong. And this particular verse

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I was reading in the NASB and its translation is different than the other ones and it caused me to go look.

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And having had Greek, I was able to go look at the Greek, long story short, here we go. What it literally says in the

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Greek is two sentences joined by conjunction. But the thing is, in the two sentences, there's no verb.

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And this is what's really interesting. So we generally speaking in English, we always have a verb in a sentence, you know,

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I went to the store. The word went is a verb, you know, I ate the hamburger, ate is the verb.

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And someone says, uh, so did you eat that hamburger? You go, yeah. Well, it's a response without a verb and it's an affirmation.

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Well, generally statements have verbs and we can get around that sometimes in English as well.

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But nevertheless, in Greek, what it says is sentence A and sentence B. It says this in Greek, so then as through one transgression, condemnation to all men.

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So it's, there's no verb. So then as through one transgression, condemnation to all men, even so through one act of right righteousness, justification of life to all men.

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So that's what it literally says in the Greek. So it has two sentences, sentence

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A and sentence B. And sentence B says, so also, or even so.

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So sentence B is taking its lead from sentence A. So it says sentence

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A through one transgression, condemnation to all men. So also through one act of righteousness, justification of life to all men.

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So sentence B is taking its lead or its structure or its form from the previous verse.

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This is very critical. Now what do we do with this? Because we don't have a verb there.

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So we've got to put a verb in there. So remember sentence A and sentence B are equal, but they're equal except differently.

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What both are saying is through one act, there was a result.

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There was a certain effect through one transgression, condemnation to all, through Jesus' sacrifice, one act of righteousness, justification of life to all.

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So each one, sentence A is talking about Adam and sentence B is talking about Jesus.

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Through Adam's sin, condemnation to all. Through Jesus' sacrifice, justification of life to all.

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That's what's going on in it. Well, wait a minute. So we got a problem. So what the

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King James has done and some other versions have done is they, instead of letting

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A govern B, they let B govern A. They reverse it. Because it says justification of life to all.

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Well, we can't have it be that everyone's justified because justification means salvation. So they interpret the word all to mean every individual who's ever lived.

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That's their first mistake. They shouldn't do that. Just let the text speak. So what they'll do is since they presuppose that justification of life to all men, of course, not everybody's saved.

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We know that because people go to hell, Mark 3, 29, Matthew 25, 46. Okay. So what they do is they say, well, sentence

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B can't mean that everyone is saved. So now we have to look at sentence

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A and soften sentence A in light of B. That's the exegetical mistake that the

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King James translators did. Because the reason is you look at sentence

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A, through one transgression, the right verb is they're resulted. Condemnation to all.

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We know that's true because in the next verse, it says through one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners.

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It's the aorist active indicative. I can get into that. But what it means is that it's an actual occurrence.

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Everyone was made sinners by what Adam did. So the proper verb is they're resulted. That was it.

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As through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. That's the proper verb.

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But then you got to drop it down into sentence B. But that means then through one act of righteousness, the result of justification of life to all men.

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Justification of life means they're all saved. Well, all can't be all or justification. So what they did was what the

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King James did was this to get around this problem. I'll explain why they made a mistake. They don't understand the text.

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It says in the King James, therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of the one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

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Well, the free gift is not there. They completely added it in and changed the meaning of the text because they let

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B govern A. It's supposed to be A govern B. Let the

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Bible speak for what it says. And if your understanding of the text doesn't agree with what you think it actually says, then you need to change.

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So here's the answer. The best translation is the NESB. So then as through one transgression, the result of condemnation, everybody.

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That's a fact. Even so in like manner, the one act of righteousness, the result of justification of life to all men.

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Well, all men are not saved. You're right. If all means every individual. But wait a minute.

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You see, Paul does this. I've actually thought about writing a paper on this where if you go to verse 15, there's a phrase, the many or.

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Yeah, look at this. The many. Check this out. But the free gift is not like the transgression.

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For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man,

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Jesus Christ abounded to the many. He does this again, where the many, the phrase, the many has two different meanings in the same sentence, just like the word all has two different meanings in the same sentence.

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In Romans 5, 18, because he's thinking theology. He's thinking of the representation of Adam and the representation of Jesus.

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It's implicit in the text. Adam is the first one who represented everybody.

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But Jesus represented his people, not every individual. Because the father gave to the son, the elect.

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Ephesians 1, 4, and Jesus came to redeem the elect. He says, all the father gives me will come to me. John 6, 37.

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He says, I lay my life down for the sheep. John 10, 15. So he's coming for the ones that are his.

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And that second all is all that the father has given him. Then when you look at it, it makes perfect sense.

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Well, furthermore, if you go to 1 Corinthians 15, 22, it says, as in Adam, all die.

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So also in Christ, all should be made alive. So in Christ is a term of federal headship, where he is the representative.

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And it says, in Christ, all will be made alive. That all can only be those who are in Christ, who were saved.

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Furthermore, and I'm gonna go through this kind of quickly because we're a little bit running out of time. When you go to 2

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Corinthians 5, 14, something very interesting is said there. For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all.

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Therefore, all died. That verse is critical. People say, well, he died for all.

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That means everybody. But then it says, therefore, all died. If you do research on the phrase, all died, or dying with Christ, you'll find out that only the believers are the ones who have died with Christ.

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You can go to Colossians chapter three, verses one through four. You can go to Romans 6, six,

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Romans 6, eight. Those are three places we have died with Christ. We have been made to die to the law through the person of Christ.

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We've died with him. So whenever it talks about anybody dying in relationship to Christ, it's only the believers.

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We would say in the broader scope, only the elect, because they become the believers because God grants to the elect faith,

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Philippians 1, 29. That faith is in Christ, John 6, 29. So if it says he died for all, and the all are the ones given to him, therefore all died, it makes perfect sense.

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If it says, therefore, one died for all, it means every individual who ever lived. Therefore, every individual who ever lived died in Christ.

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Well, that can't work theologically. So we go back to Romans 5, 18. We see that Paul is using the word all differently than we do.

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And that's why the King James gets Romans 5, 18 wrong and the NASB gets it right.