---
title: Galatians 4:6
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/galatians-4-6/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/galatians-4-6.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Galatians 4:6
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Galatians 4:6

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "Now because YOU are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts and it cries out: "Abba, Father!""
- NWT (2013 revision): "Now because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, and it cries out: "Abba, Father!""

## JW Usage

The Watchtower treats "the spirit of his Son" as a metonym for Jehovah's impersonal holy spirit — the "active force" by which God adopts believers. The possessive ("of his Son") is softened into an objective genitive ("the spirit that testifies to or comes from the Son"). The Spirit's cry of "Abba, Father!" is reassigned to the believer using the spirit — not to the Spirit himself.

## Protestant Usage

Paul's phrase is devastating to the "active force" reading. The Spirit is called the Spirit *of his Son* — the Son possesses the Spirit. Romans 8:9 uses the same phrase as a synonym for "the Spirit of God" and "the Spirit of Christ" interchangeably; Philippians 1:19 calls him "the Spirit of Jesus Christ." An impersonal force does not belong to a person. And the Spirit's action in 4:6 is personal: he *cries* "Abba, Father" — the intimate Aramaic address Jesus himself uses in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). The parallel in Romans 8:15-16 makes it explicit: "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are God's children." Crying, witnessing, adopting — these are person- acts, not the behaviours of an energy field. If Jesus is a creature, how does a creaturely "active force" belonging to him cry to the Father in the believer's heart?

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders to pneuma as lowercase "spirit" and uses the neuter "it cries out" where every major English translation capitalises "Spirit" and uses the personal pronoun ("who cries out" — ESV, NIV, NASB). This is one verse in the NWT's systematic depersonalisation of the Spirit, documented more fully at 1 Corinthians 12:11 ("as it wills"), John 14:16-17 ("that one" / "it"), and Ephesians 4:30. The lowercase and the neuter together mean a JW reading Galatians 4:6 in the NWT never encounters the Spirit as "he."

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Spirit of Christ — Restructured Away](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/spirit-of-christ.md) — 1 Peter 1:11 — The NWT Breaks the Genitive to Hide Pre-Existence [NWT Translation]
- [Do Christians Pray to the Holy Spirit?](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/prayer-to-holy-spirit.md) — Romans 8:26-27 — the Spirit is the one praying with us [Holy Spirit]