1 Peter 1:3
1 Peter 1:33Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
JWs restrict the "new birth" and the "living hope" of to the 144,000 anointed class. Being "born again" is a special privilege for those with the heavenly calling; the "great crowd" have an earthly hope and do not need to be born again. The "inheritance reserved in heaven" (v. 4) is taken as confirming the two-class system: heaven for the anointed, earth for everyone else.
Peter writes to "the temporary residents scattered about in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" () — ordinary believers across five Roman provinces, not an elite anointed class. He tells all of them that God "gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" and to "an inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in the heavens for you" (vv. 3-4). Jesus himself made the new birth a universal requirement: "unless someone is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (). The Greek tis ("someone," "anyone") is unrestricted. First confirms: "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God." The golden chain of shows a single unbroken sequence — foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified — with no fork into a second class. If being born again is limited to 144,000, then by Jesus' own words the rest cannot see the Kingdom.