Comma After "Through Faith" in Romans 3:25

Romans 3:25  •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 13
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Question: Rom. 3:2525Whom 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; (Romans 3:25). Is the R.V. grammatically correct in putting a comma after “through faith” instead of reading “through faith in his blood” as in our Authorized Version? H. N.
Answer: Amongst the innumerable editions of the Greek Testament from the first published text (Erasmus 1516) down to the Revisers’ (Cambridge 1882), I have not been able to discover one that inserts the comma, so that in this the Revisers’ would seem to stand alone. Not but that Erasmus in his last edition (1535) departs in his Latin translation from the rendering of his first edition and gives “reconciliatorem per fidem, interveniente ipsius sanguine” in place of “reconciliatorem, per fidem in ipsius sanguine” (1516). But this, as well as Beza’s, Wetstein’s, and Bowyer’s comments on the clause is interpretation. The grammar is not at stake in either case, and these editors did not therefore venture to introduce the comma into their respective Greek texts.
As the Authorized Version and the margin of the Revisers’ have it, the words “through faith in his blood” without a preceding comma seem rightly to connect with “propitiation” or “propitiatory.” For God’s righteousness in “passing over” the sins of the Old Testament saints, and the justifying now of the believer in Jesus, could not be apart from “faith in his blood.” It is in His death that Christ is the “propitiatory” and this avails for those who have “faith in His blood.” This guards against Beza’s notion of Christ’s whole life being a propitiatory sacrifice.