John 3:5
John 3:55Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
The Watchtower restricts the new birth to the 144,000 anointed Christians who will rule with Christ in heaven. The "great crowd" of Witnesses with an earthly hope are taught that Jesus' words to Nicodemus do not bind them — Nicodemus, in this reading, was a potential member of the anointed class, and most modern Witnesses are not. The verse becomes a description of one optional pathway among two rather than a universal entrance requirement.
Jesus does not say "you, Nicodemus" — he says "unless anyone is born from water and spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." The word translated "anyone" is the Greek tis, an indefinite pronoun: anyone at all, with no class qualifier. There is no two-tier system in the text. Pair this with — "Everyone who exercises faith that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God" — and the universal pas closes the door on a select-class reading. If a Witness has not been born again, by Jesus' own words they cannot enter the kingdom they are working to inherit. Press gently: "Has the new birth Jesus describes here happened to you?"
The NWT renders pneuma as lowercase "spirit" here ("born from water and spirit") and again in verse 6 ("born from the spirit"). Most English translations capitalise "Spirit" because the noun refers to the Holy Spirit personally. The NWT's lowercase rendering is consistent with its broader treatment of the Holy Spirit as an impersonal "active force" rather than a divine person — a pneumatology the NWT enforces by typography even where the Greek itself does not distinguish case. The choice is theological, not linguistic.