(This article also includes a 2-part podcast discussion. Click the play button below, or subscribe and listen on your Apple or Google podcast app.)
In Part 1 we look at the basics of the Jehovah’s Witness worldview. In Part 2 we took a deeper dive into specific beliefs to see not only what they believe, but how that shapes their lives. Now let’s take all of that and discuss the most important topic of all – sharing the gospel with a Jehovah’s Witness.
What to expect
We often picture ourselves sharing the gospel with someone and seeing God bring them to tear-filled repentance right in front of us. We want to see the light click as the glory of God’s goodness through the cross is revealed, creating a fear and awe of God’s holiness and what it reveals about their own sinful condition. We want to witness God take someone dead in their sin and make them alive to Christ. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see our great God work like that.
Consider this an official warning: that probably won’t happen when you talk to a Jehovah’s Witness. Instead, remember this verse when you’re engaging with them:
I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6)
Our goal when sharing the gospel with anyone, but especially a Jehovah’s Witness, isn’t to convert them on the spot. Our goal is to plant a seed of truth that God will add to other seeds, letting them grow until the person realizes the truth of the gospel. And that’s a great relief to us, because we aren’t required to know everything – all we need to do is be faithful to Jesus Christ and the truth He’s given us.
With that in mind, here are some things to know when engaging a Jehovah’s Witness
They will know more than you
A Jehovah’s Witness will spend several hours every week just preparing to talk to people and defend their faith. Since they also likely spend 8-10 hours knocking on doors, they are probably very experienced in dealing with rejection, criticism, and questions to their faith. As we discussed in Part 2, this constant rejection makes them dig deeper into their religion because it’s the only place they find acceptance.
Don’t feel like you can’t talk to them because of this. Remember that debates are won by who is most convincing, but winning a debate doesn’t change truth. You don’t need to answer all their questions, all you need to do is keep the conversation focused on two things that we’ll discuss: Christ is God, and salvation is by grace alone.
A Jehovah’s Witness is trained to tangle you up in secondary issues like word translations, Bible verses taken out of context, and whatever else can pull you away from questions they can’t answer. Just keep going back to the most important thing: Jesus Christ and the gospel.
Don’t try turning them to your way of thinking
Remember that if you’re a Christian, you represent the whore of Babylon. You are part of a false system that was created by Satan to pull people away from jehovah. They’ve likely spent their entire lives being convinced that a Christian’s beliefs are incompatible with the Jehovah’s Witness teaching, just as we would outright reject Islam. The differences really are that extreme.
Instead, your goal is to use truth, spoken in love, to give them permission to question their own beliefs. Your job isn’t to convince them that you’re right, but that what they believe may be wrong. God will be the one who brings them to truth, often when they find themselves alone with their thoughts instead of in the presence of another Jehovah’s Witness who needs to see them staying strong in the true faith.
You aren’t just challenging religious beliefs
Remember that the entire system of a Jehovah’s witness is completely insulated. Many have been there since birth, with all their friends and family located at their nearest Kingdom Hall. Their entire belief system revolves around this: their salvation from the impending Armageddon hinges on their faithfulness to the teachings of the Governing Body.
When you challenge them to see that Christ is God and the only means of salvation, you aren’t just changing their mind. By planting the seed of truth, you’re asking them to willingly uproot their entire lives, lose contact with all friends and family, and possibly lose every sense of stability they’ve ever known. They stand to lose everything for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Let them know you’re there for them (and mean it)
Before a Jehovah’s Witness leaves your home, let them know that they’re welcome to come back on their own if they have any doubts and need someone to talk to.
Many stories of ex-Witnesses are often the same. They use words like “escape” to describe leaving, because the religion is a cult that doesn’t let you go. There are sometimes weeks or months of living in doubt but being too afraid to leave. And quite often, those who escape don’t celebrate a clear understanding of Christ, but an absolute rejection of God. We can hardly blame them.
When discussing the gospel with a Jehovah’s Witness, they need to know they don’t need to be left alone with their doubts. We aren’t there to simply win a debate and settle for them leaving a lie. As followers of Jesus Christ, we want to love and protect these people. What are some things we should be prepared for if we’re going to do more than make them doubt their religion?
- They will be cut off from friends and family, and younger people may be without a home
- A lifetime of lies will be crashing down around them, and they won’t know how to process it
- They will be tempted to go the complete opposite direction of their upbringing, rejecting Christ outright
- They may be without any life skills, unable to navigate a world outside the safety of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
- There will be a lot of guilt and fear as they abandon their source of salvation, embracing beliefs they were always told were evil
Leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses isn’t like leaving Catholicism, where your former friends are disturbed but still kind. People are genuinely leaving the clutches of a cult, and before they leave our home they need to know that there is safety outside of their religion.
How to tell a Jehovah’s Witness about Jesus Christ
There’s a lot to know about Jehovah’s Witnesses, especially since they get so much right about God’s holiness, the importance of studying the Bible, and the need to serve others. While religions like Islam and even Mormonism can be explained with broad brush strokes, trying to piece through what makes the Jehovah’s Witnesses a false religion requires much more care and precision.
However, sharing the gospel with them is quite simple. There are only two things they need to know, and those two things will always lead to the gospel.
- Their good works and baptism can’t remove God’s wrath for their sin, and no amount of effort can create faith or earn salvation (Isaiah 64:6 and Romans 3:10-20)
- Jesus Christ is God, and thus He is able to save us without any work on our part (Romans 3:21-24 and Ephesians 2:8-9)
- Because of those two things, they need to put their trust in the true Jesus Christ alone for salvation (Romans 10:13)
And that’s really it. Remember that we’re planting a seed, keep the conversation on Jesus Christ and the gospel, and we’re all set. So let’s look at ways to talk about these two things.
We’re not saved by works
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that we’re saved by Christ, but we maintain our salvation through works. They may argue that it’s not the works that save us because they only demonstrate our faith, but the reality is that it’s a works-based religion like everything else. They need to see that no amount of personal sacrifice, good deeds, or right behavior mean anything to God if they come from our attempts to earn or maintain salvation.
For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (Isaiah 64:6)
This verse is significantly more intense than we realize. The Hebrew word for “filthy” isn’t about dirt-stained clothes. The word literally means “menstrual fluids.” Consider that this is said in the Old Testament when the Israelites were specifically told to keep away from a woman’s blood during her menstrual cycle.
So when we talk about the foolishness of approaching God with our good works and saying “Look what I did!” it’s a very strong image of how disgusting and wretched our good deeds are when they’re done under our own power. A Jehovah’s Witness has likely spent their entire life trying to prove they’re good enough, and it’s important to lovingly point out that God doesn’t demand their works, but their willingness to ask Christ to save them.
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. (James 2:26)
Interestingly, Jehovah’s Witnesses use James 2:14-26 to prove that they must do works to prove they have faith. Unfortunately, a complete misunderstanding of what’s actually being said puts emphasis on the wrong thing. James in no way says “Have works to prove you have faith.” Instead, his entire point agrees with what we see in other parts of the Bible: If you have faith, you will naturally show it through your actions. This understanding of James is reinforced in Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45, and Proverbs 4:23.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Of course, it doesn’t get more straightforward than this. We are saved by God, not our works.
But why can’t works save us? Why are our good deeds so repulsive to a holy God?
- Romans 3:10-12 tells us that we’re all incapable of doing good under our own power. That includes us even after salvation.
- The things we consider “good deeds” are done out of selfishness, often because we have a transactional idea of “If I do this good thing, God will reward me.” So the deeds are done for us, not God.
- Galatians 5:22-23 is clear that true good, those things that please God, are actually the result of the Holy Spirit in us. Therefore, even the good we think we do is really God’s goodness working through us thanks to our forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
This is why, even among genuine Christianity, the idea that we need to work to keep our salvation makes no sense. Nothing we do is of any merit – all we can do is submit to God in humility so He can demonstrate His goodness through us.
There are many ways to approach this topic with a Jehovah’s Witness, but this is an important one because there’s a good chance it’s exaclty what they need to hear. Despite the appearance they put on for us and other Witnesses, the reality is that they are drowning under the weight of being a person who is completely depraved and incapable of good trying to work hard to earn salvation. Their understanding of salvation isn’t just impossible, but it’s absolutely exhausting to pursue.
Jesus Christ is God, not a god
There are a number of ways to approach this subject. In Part 2 I discussed several key passages as well as how I use Genesis 1:1 to prove that Christ must be God, but there are a few simpler ways to go about it. The best part is that we can use a Jehovah’s Witness’s own Bible to do so.
Idea #1: Putting Jesus in a box
This method from Greg Koukl may be the most creative way I’ve seen to demonstrate the Bible’s claim of Christ’s deity. Its use of visual aids, tactile components, and physically involving the Jehovah’s Witness really makes them commit to understanding the idea. Check the link for a more detailed explanation, but I’ll give a quick rundown of how it works.
As we’ve discussed, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a Bible version that has been purposely altered to reinforce their own beliefs. The reason it’s important to use their own translation is because they are convinced that their version of the Bible is the perfect standard, and using anything else will carry less impact because they can handwave it away as “a corruption of the text.”
However, despite editing John 1:1, the NWT translators overlooked John 1:2-3 because the implications of those verses aren’t as apparent. Here’s the text:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence. (John 1:1-3 New World Translation)
Despite trying to remove Christ’s deity by changing Him to “a god, this is a clear teaching that everything in the universe, apart from God, was made through Christ. We can both agree on that, although the Witness will insist that God create Christ first, then everything through Him. But using their own translation, we can show that Christ’s deity is still present.
- Have them read John 1:1-3 and ask them what it means that “not even one thing came into existence.” They’ll say something about how God created Christ, then through Christ created everything else.
- Have them take a piece of paper and draw a large box. Above the box, tell them to write “Everything that exists.”
- Draw a line down the middle of that box. On the left, write “All things that never came into being”, and on the write put “All things that came into being.”
- On the “never” side, ask them to write down everything that exists but was never created. Obviously, the only thing on this side will be “God.” On the other side, ask them to write “all created things.” Now everything that exists is in one of those boxes.
- Now hand them a quarter and tell them it represents Jesus. Tell them to put Christ in the correct category.
If they’re thinking about John 1:1-3, you may see them hesitate. Of course the natural response is to put Christ into the “all created things.” However, this verse says that “Every created thing was created through Christ.” And that’s tricky, because it would require Christ to make Himself.
Of course, there are two arguments. The mostly likely response is that “apart from Him” means “other than Jesus.” But that gets tricky because by changing the meaning of the beginning, it changes the meaning of everything that follows. “Other than Jesus, not even one thing came into existence.” That means that Jesus is the only created thing that exists.
The second argument will likely never come up unless you’re dealing with someone who has encountered this issue before, and they’ll try to use Greek to say that John 1:1’s “in the beginning” could mean “in a beginning.” I’d suggest reading Greg Koukl’s explanation for more details, but the simple problem with this argument is that it still doesn’t answer the fact that John 1:3 is clear that He created all things, and nothing was created without Him.
Idea #2: Asking 2 Questions
I heard this idea from Mike Winger’s lecture on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Although not as creative as Greg Koukl’s method, it’s very devious and does something important: it makes a Jehovah’s Witness decide between being consistent with what they’ve said or ignoring the truth to maintain their beliefs.
Doing this is very simple. It starts by asking them two questions and ends with reading the Bible.
Question #1: Is Jesus equal to Jehovah? (they will of course say no, because there is only one true God)
Question #2: If Jesus is equal to Jehovah, what would that mean? (they may not know how to answer, but ask them to say something. Hopefully they’ll agree that it would mean He is God.)
Now take them to John 5:15-23 in their New World Translation. It would be best to read John 5:1-23, but depending on your setting you can remind them of what the first 14 verses show us: This is when Jesus tells a lame man to pick up his mat and walk, and the Jews were angry because He was healing during the Sabbath.
After reading, go back and focus on this section
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things during the Sabbath. But he answered them: “My Father has kept working until now, and I keep working.” This is why the Jews began seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath but he was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God. (John 5:16 New World Translation)
There are two important things to note here:
- By saying that God was His father, Christ purposely made Himself equal with God
- John isn’t writing what the Jews said. He is explaining to the reader what Christ did that made them so angry. In other words, He’s confirming that Christ made Himself equal with God.
Then, read what Christ says in verse 23:
so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. (John 5:23 New World Translation)
Here, Christ adds to His claims to being God by saying that He deserves equal worship as the Father, again confirming that He made Himself equal with God.
At this point, there will probably be some rabbit trails and attempts to move the conversation. Just stay firmly planted in the topic and remind them that if Christ is equal with God, it can only mean that He is God.
Quickly explaining the gospel
If you’ve managed to explain why works can’t save them and plant the seed that Christ is God, it’s important to bring it all together and tell them why it matters. Remember, we aren’t trying to prove them wrong – our desire is for them to see the need for a true savior.
The point to emphasize is their need for the true Jesus Christ to save them. If possible, point out that many religions have a different Jesus.
- Muslims believe Jesus was a man and can’t save anyone.
- Mormons believe He was birthed by God the Father and His wife and lets us become gods.
- Christians believe Christ is God in the flesh and is the only way to Heaven, free from our works.
- Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus was an archangel, and His death opened the possibility for us to live good lives and earn our salvation.
Only one of these versions of Jesus Christ can truly save. They need to take time and see what God’s word truly says about which version is the only way to the Father.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)
Keep pointing to Christ and our need for Him alone.
- Christ died for us, specifically
- Through His death for us, we can be spared from God’s wrath against our sin. Not through our works; through Christ.
- Through Christ, we no longer have to be enemies of God. Not based on how good we are, but purely through Christ’s death.
If they’ve heard their good works mean nothing to God, then it will take much more than a powerful angel dying so that we can earn salvation. It demands that God Himself step down, taking the punishment for our own sin and trading our filth for His righteousness. When we repent and ask Christ to save us, we have assurance that we are truly saved. We can do nothing to earn or keep it because if we could lose our salvation, we absolutely would.
Send them away with hope
Again, don’t expect anything to be visible. Our goal is to give them the gospel and let God spend all the time He needs to grow that seed into a realization of their need for a true Savior.
With everything said during our time with a Jehovah’s Witness, our goal is always to keep pointing them to their need for Christ. They live a life completely without hope, always working to show a perfect life while they are secretly drowning is sorrow. Their salvation is up to their own goodness, and deep down we all know we aren’t nearly as good as we make others believe.
As always, our motivation for speaking to them is love. We don’t want to win a conversation or remove them from a false religion. We want for a Jehovah’s Witness what we want for the world – for them to see the beauty of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh who took our sins upon Himself so that we could be forgiven and enjoy God for the rest of eternity.
This concludes the series on what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe. If this has been a useful resource in reaching others for Christ, please consider supporting Onward in the Faith. Click this link to learn more.
