John 4:23
John 4:2323But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him.
A central verse for Watchtower worship practice — true worshippers worship the Father, in spirit and truth, which is understood as worship directed to Jehovah alone according to accurate knowledge. It is used to justify not directing worship to Jesus, since the Father is named as the one sought.
Jesus is contrasting worship at Jerusalem with worship at Gerizim, not ruling on which persons of the Godhead may be worshipped. Reading it as an exclusion requires the verse to be answering a question the Samaritan woman never asked. Against the exclusion, the New Testament repeatedly shows worship directed to Jesus and accepted: the disciples worship him at and 28:9; God commands the angels to worship him at ; Thomas addresses him as "my Lord and my God" and is commended rather than corrected. Compare that with , where an angel refuses worship outright — which is what a creature does. There is also something useful in the next verse. The NWT renders "God is a Spirit," adding an indefinite article to a predicate noun that has no article in the Greek — the same construction as c. Nobody thinks that sentence means God is one spirit among many; everybody reads it as describing what God is by nature. That is exactly what "the Word was God" says at 1:1, and exactly what "a god" denies. Compare , , .