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The present tense is often veiled by the A.V. Note the vividness of the following
revisions:--
"All are seeking thee" for "All men seek for thee" (Mark 1: 37).
"The darkness is passing away" (I John 2: 8).
"Are perishing . . . . . are being saved" (I Cor. 1: 18).
"Is being renewed" (Col. 3: 10).
Note also this tense in these passages of I Thessalonians:--
"Jesus, which delivereth us from the wrath to come" (I Thess. 1: 10).
"Walk worthy of God, Who calleth you unto His own kingdom and glory" (I Thess. 2: 12).
Take again the great difference--to be seen and remembered--between the command,
"Be strong", of II Tim. 2: 1, A.V. and the "Be strengthened" of the R.V. The same idea
underlies the change in Rom. 4: 20. Abraham was not only "strong in faith" (A.V.), but
"waxed strong in faith" (R.V.). So also the familiar "Finally, my brethren, be strong in
the Lord, and in the power of His might" (Eph. 6: 10) becomes "Be made strong" in the
R.V. margin.
The most difficult tense to translate into English is the aorist. Its very name means
"indefinite or without bounds". Of this tense the Revisers have given a word in their
preface:--
"We have often ventured to represent the Greek aorist by the English preterite, even
where the reader may find some passing difficulty in such a rendering because we have
felt convinced that the true meaning of the original has been obscured by the presence of
the familiar auxiliary. A remarkable illustration may be found in the seventeenth chapter
of St. John's Gospel, where the combination of the aorist and the perfect shews, beyond
all reasonable doubt, that different relations of time were intended to be expressed."
It would occupy too much space to set out the A.V. and the R.V. of John 17:, but
perhaps one or two verses will suffice to display the difference. For the benefit of any
reader to whom the terms perfect and aorist may be foreign, the auxiliary "have", as
"I have glorified", is the sign in English of the perfect, while "I glorified" would, in
contrast, represent the aorist:--