---
title: John 12:33
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-12-33/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-12-33.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: John 12:33
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# John 12:33

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> He said this to indicate the kind of death He was going to die.

## JW Usage

John 12:33 is not a verse JWs cite for any distinctive doctrine. It functions as a narrator's aside explaining what Jesus meant by being "lifted up." JWs read it the way most readers do — John is signalling the manner of the crucifixion. Where it surfaces in apologetic conversation is incidental: it shows up when someone is asking why the NWT renders estin as "means" at the Last Supper, because John 12:33 contains the word for "signify" that Jesus did not use.

## Protestant Usage

The verse is a quiet but decisive piece of evidence for the Eucharist translation question. John uses the participle of sēmainō — "signifying what kind of death he was about to die." This is the ordinary Greek verb for "to signify" or "to indicate." When a New Testament writer wants to flag a symbolic meaning, the vocabulary is available and gets used. The contrast with the Last Supper passages is exact: at Matt 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, and 1 Cor 11:24 Jesus uses the bare copula estin, not sēmainō. If he had wanted the bread and wine to be plainly symbolic, John 12:33 shows the word he could have used.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [This Is, Not This Means](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/this-means-my-body-eucharist.md) — Matthew 26:26 — The Greek Verb Estin at the Last Supper [NWT Translation]