1 John 4:8
1 John 4:88Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
JWs cite "God is love" as a foundational description of Jehovah's character and as the warrant for treating love as a defining mark of true worship. The verse is uncontroversial in JW publications and frequently appears in introductory tracts and Watchtower study articles. The doctrinal weight the verse carries does not threaten any distinctive JW teaching, so the Watchtower has no reason to read it against its plain sense.
John writes ho theos agapē estin — "God is love" — with the same bare predicative copula he uses for "God is light" (). The verse is one of the New Testament's defining identity statements: love is not a divine attribute among others but a description of who God is. As a control case for the NWT translation question, this verse confirms that the translators render estin as "is" without trouble whenever the resulting English does not press against a Watchtower doctrine.
The NWT renders the verb "is" — the literal Greek copula — and reads naturally. The verse functions as a control alongside ("God is light"): the NWT is willing to render estin straightforwardly when the identity statement does not threaten Watchtower theology. Where the same Greek verb gets swapped to "means" — the four Last Supper passages, , 1 Cor 10:4 — the trigger is the doctrinal payload of the literal reading, not anything in the grammar.