JWs typically frame salvation as a personal decision to research, accept,
and join the organisation. "Decide for yourself" after being "encouraged
to study the Bible with us" puts the initiative on the individual's will.
This collides with Jesus' own teaching that the Father's drawing precedes
and enables any coming to Christ.
Read with them, then — "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out." Then — "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." Three times in one chapter Jesus locates the initiative in the Father, not the seeker. Pair this with — the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, they are foolishness to him. Ask: "If a man is dead in trespasses (), what does he contribute to his own regeneration?" Let the JW answer. Then show that closes the loop — those who receive Christ were born "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
Salvation is initiated, sustained, and completed by God. If the Father must draw you before you can come, and if all he gives the Son come and none are lost (), then your "decision" to join an organisation is not the ground of your standing — the Father's sovereign call is.
But we still have to choose Jehovah. God doesn't force anyone.
Agreed — no one is dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom. But Jesus doesn't say "God invites everyone and waits to see who responds." He says no one CAN come unless drawn. The drawing isn't optional assistance — it's the condition of possibility. Your coming is real, and your willing is real, but the drawing that makes that willing possible is God's work, not yours.
John 12:32 says Jesus draws all men to himself — so the drawing is universal.
The same Greek word (helkuo) is used in and 12:32. In and 21:11 it's used of dragging a net full of fish — an effectual pulling. If the drawing in 6:44 is universal and effectual, then universalism follows (everyone gets saved) — which neither of us believe. So either the drawing isn't universal, or it isn't effectual — and Jesus' own words ("I will raise him up on the last day") say it's effectual. That leaves us with the classical reading: the drawing is particular and efficacious.
This is just Calvinism — we don't believe in that.
I'm not asking you to accept a system, just the plain words of Jesus. Read the whole chapter — , 6:39, 6:44, 6:65. Four times Jesus locates the initiative with the Father. We can disagree about labels; the question is what Jesus himself said.
Don't get drawn into a predestination-versus-free-will debate on the doorstep — the JW will not have the philosophical categories for it and you'll lose the gospel moment. Keep it on Jesus' actual words in John 6. The goal is to unsettle the assumption that salvation is a self-initiated project of research and organisational affiliation.
Read the whole of John 6, lingering on verses 35-45 and 60-66, until you can find from memory each place where Jesus locates the initiative with the Father: verses 37, 39, 44 and 65. Then read and . Compare the same Greek verb, helkuo, in and , and check how the NWT renders "draw" in each place. Practise the doorstep question aloud — "How do you know you've been drawn?" — as a pastoral question, not a debating move. Prepare for "This is just Calvinism — we don't believe in that": set the label aside and return to the plain words Jesus spoke across John 6.