John 1:3
John 1:33Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.
JWs read this verse through rather than the other way round. Because the Watchtower teaches that Jehovah created Jesus first and then made everything else through him, "all things came into existence through him" is understood as agency — Jesus is the master worker, the skilled craftsman of , through whom Jehovah produced the rest of creation. The verse is taken to describe what Jesus did on Jehovah's behalf, not what Jesus is. A JW will often grant the verse readily and move straight to "but he was created first," treating creative agency as proof of subordinate rank rather than of divine identity.
This is the verse that closes the escape route, and it does so in the JW's own Bible. Their NWT reads: "All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence." Ask gently what "not even one thing" leaves out. If Jesus himself came into existence, then he is one of the things that came into existence — and the verse says every one of those came into existence through him. He would have to have made himself. Then set it beside , where Jehovah says he stretched out the heavens alone and spread out the earth by himself, with no one else present. Two statements, both in their Bible: Jehovah created alone; all things were made through Jesus. There is no third option that keeps both true except that Jesus is not outside the identity of the one Creator. The grammar reinforces it. John has been using two different verbs. The Word "was" (en) — continuous, with no starting point in view. But all things "came to be" (egeneto) — a point of origin. John puts the Word on one side of that line and everything created on the other, and he never once crosses the Word over until verse 14, when the Word becomes flesh. Compare , . Some JWs who read from an interlinear point to the Greek word behind "apart from", choris, and suggest it leaves room for one exception: the Word himself, made first and standing outside the "all things". But choris means "without" or "separately from". It is the word Paul uses in when he says a person is declared righteous apart from works of law. It describes what happens when someone is absent from an action, not who is left off a list. John's claim is that if you take the Word out of the picture, nothing at all comes into being. Try reading it as "except" and the verse falls apart: "All things came into existence through him, and except for him not even one thing came into existence" would mean the Word was the only thing that ever came into existence, which contradicts the first half of the same sentence. John says it twice on purpose, once positively (all things through him) and once negatively (not even one thing without him), so that no created thing is left outside the Word's work. The NWT keeps the "without" sense, so you can make the point from their own Bible. Ask kindly which word in the verse means "except".
The NWT renders this verse faithfully — "not even one thing came into existence" — with no qualifier added. That matters, because four verses into Colossians 1 the same translators insert "other" four times, so that Jesus creates "all other things." The two passages make the same claim in the Greek. Only one of them was adjusted. Reading and side by side in the NWT itself is the quickest way to show that the qualifier in Colossians is the translators' addition and not the text's.