John 17:15
John 17:1515I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one.
Watchtower publications cite v.16 ("they are no part of the world") frequently while passing more lightly over v.15. When v.15 does appear, it is treated as Jesus' provision of spiritual protection within an inevitably hostile environment — not as a rebuke of the monastic instinct that separation from outsiders is the Christian ideal. The verse is rarely paired with ("I sent them into the world") in JW exposition.
This is one of the most under-cited verses in the Watchtower's whole separation theology. Jesus is praying to the Father in the upper room, the night before his death, and his explicit request is that the Father NOT take his disciples out of the world — only that he keep them from the evil one. Jesus prayed AGAINST the monastic reading. Read with v.18 ("just as you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world"), the structure is clear: the disciples remain in ordinary contact with the world, but their hearts are guarded from the evil one. Salt only preserves by contact (Matt 5:13-16); a city set on a hill is visible because it is in the geography. Jesus' priestly prayer rules out the categorical-withdrawal reading at the highest possible level — his own intercession with the Father.