Responding to Jehovah's Witnesses

This argument is not about whether God has a name — He does, and many Christians love and pray it. Affirm that first. The question is narrower and sharper: does the New Testament anywhere command believers to use the specific form 'Jehovah' as a condition of true worship or salvation? Walk the JW through the only NT passage that makes any name a salvation requirement.

Step 1 — Acts 4:12. Read it together, ideally from their NWT: 'There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.' Ask: which name does Peter mean here? Look at verse 10 — the very name Peter just named is 'Jesus Christ the Nazarene.' This is the New Testament's clearest statement about a saving name, and the name is Jesus.

Step 2 — Romans 10:9–13. This is the hinge. Paul says in verse 9 that the confession that saves is 'Jesus is Lord' (the NWT keeps 'Lord' here — the Greek is Kyrios). Verse 12: 'the same Lord is rich toward all who call on him.' Verse 13 then quotes Joel 2:32: 'Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved' (NWT). Paul's whole argument flows from one subject to another without a break — the Lord you confess in verse 9 is the Lord you call on in verse 13. Verse 14 confirms it: 'How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?' The Jews had believed in Jehovah for centuries; the One they had not yet believed in is Jesus. Paul is taking an Old Testament YHWH-text and deliberately cross-applying it to Jesus.

Step 3 — Acts 2:21 and Philippians 2:9–11. Peter at Pentecost quotes the same Joel passage and ends his sermon urging the crowd to 'be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ' (Acts 2:38). Paul tells us in Philippians that God 'gave him the name above every name' so that every knee bows at 'the name of Jesus' — language directly drawn from Isaiah 45:23, a YHWH passage. Across the New Testament, when an apostle commands a name to be used, called upon, baptised into, or bowed to, the name they specify is Jesus.

Step 4 — the missing command. Ask gently: if using the form 'Jehovah' was an apostolic priority, where is the verse that says so? Not a verse about God having a name — many of those exist — but one that commands Christians to use 'Jehovah' specifically. There is no such verse. The whole NT corpus, including the speeches of Peter and Paul to mixed audiences, never tells anyone they must use the Tetragrammaton or its reconstruction.

Paul knew exactly what he was doing when he quoted Joel. Look at the flow of his argument in your own NWT. Verse 9: confess 'Jesus is Lord.' Verse 12: 'the same Lord is rich toward all who call on him.' Verse 13: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Then verse 14: 'How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?' The Jewish people had believed in Jehovah for centuries — the One they had not yet believed in is Jesus. Paul takes an Old Testament YHWH promise and deliberately applies it to Christ. That is the point of the quotation, not a backdoor into making 'Jehovah' the saving name.

Even granting that hypothesis for the sake of argument, every recorded apostolic command about a name to call on, be baptised into, or be saved by points to Jesus. Acts 2:38, Acts 4:12, Acts 4:18, Acts 9:14, Acts 22:16, Romans 10:9, 1 Corinthians 1:2, Philippians 2:10–11 — none of these passages would make sense if the saving name were 'Jehovah' and the apostles had simply forgotten to mention it. The pattern is too thick to be explained by lost scribal tradition.

Yes, the Father's name matters — and Christians treasure it. But 'hallowed be your name' is a prayer that God's name be honoured; it is not a translation rule for the New Testament. The same Lord's Prayer tells us to address God as 'Father' — the very form Jesus modelled in Gethsemane and on the cross. Honouring God's name and inserting a specific form 237 times into the Greek NT are different things.

No one disputes that Jesus made the Father known — that is the heart of the gospel. The question is what name the apostles then commanded believers to call on. Read on: in Acts 4:12 Peter says salvation is in no other name except the one he just preached, which is Jesus. In Romans 10:13 Paul redirects Joel's YHWH-promise to the same Jesus he told us to confess as Lord in verse 9. Knowing the Father's name is one thing; making the form 'Jehovah' a worship requirement is something the New Testament never does.

That is a pastoral instinct worth honouring, and many Christians share it — we love the names YHWH, Yahweh, the Father. The narrower question is what the apostles required. They distinguished the true God from false gods constantly without using the form 'Jehovah' even once in any surviving Greek manuscript. Their distinguishing strategy was to preach Jesus as the Lord through whom the Father is known. If 5,800- plus Greek manuscripts agree that the apostles wrote Kyrios rather than YHWH, perhaps their way of distinguishing the true God can also be ours.

Ask the JW to read Romans 10 in their own NWT and write down every time Paul says 'Lord' versus 'Jehovah' in verses 9 to 13. Then ask them to read verse 14 and answer: who is the one Israel had not yet believed in?