1 John 4:7
1 John 4:77Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Watchtower readings of treat John's universal present-tense formula — "everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God" — as applicable, in the strict new-covenant sense, only to the 144,000 anointed who alone are considered "born of God." For the rest of the audience the love-command is preserved but the born-of-God predicate is effectively withheld.
4:7 is the third voice in a chorus with ("everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God") and ("everything that has been born from God conquers the world"). John's favourite construction in this letter is pas ho + present participle — "everyone who" — and it is relentlessly universal. Everyone who loves, everyone who believes, everyone who has been born, everyone who overcomes. No subset markers appear in any of these formulas. The Watchtower's two-tier reading requires John to have meant "everyone in the anointed class who ..." three times in a row without ever marking the restriction. Use 4:7 as the bridge between the children-of-God question (3:1-2) and the sin-breaking indwelling (3:9): the same Spirit of God who births the believer also makes love possible in that believer. Both are gifts of being born of God; both are promises with "everyone who" addresses, not "only the anointed" addresses.