James 2:24
James 2:2424As you can see, a man is justified by his deeds and not by faith alone.
The flagship "anti-faith-alone" verse in JW polemic against Reformation soteriology. The Watchtower frames it as the New Testament's own veto on Luther: a person is justified "by works and not by faith alone," so any movement that preaches faith alone is contradicting Scripture. Pastorally this collapses Paul's question (how is a sinner declared righteous before God?) into James's question (how can outsiders tell whose faith is real?) and treats the answer to the second as the answer to the first.
Paul and James use dikaioō with two complementary senses. and — "wisdom is justified by her deeds" — use exactly the same Greek verb, and nobody thinks wisdom was declared righteous in a heavenly courtroom. Wisdom is shown to be wise by what wisdom does. sets the question James is answering: deiknymi — "show me." That is a demonstration question, not a courtroom question. The "faith alone" James denies is the demon-level mental assent of 2:19 — bare facts about God without trust, love, or surrender. The "faith alone" the Reformers affirm is living faith that produces fruit because it is alive. Both apostles are right because they are not answering the same question.
The NWT renders the simple present passive dikaioutai with the modal construction "is to be declared righteous." Most English translations read "is justified" or "is declared righteous" as a straightforward present statement; the added "is to be" gestures toward a future or obligatory verdict and softens the present-tense judicial sense. The effect on the JW reader is small but real — works become a future requirement to be met rather than the present visible evidence James is describing.