John 5:23
John 5:2323so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.
The Watchtower teaches that Jesus deserves honour as God's chief representative but not equal worship — worship belongs exclusively to Jehovah. The verse is read as honour-giving rather than worship-giving, with "just as" softened into "in a manner appropriate to the Son's lower position." A 2013 Watchtower states that those "who use Jesus' name in their worship but fail to give the greater honour to Jehovah do not manifest a genuine love of the light."
The Greek kathōs — "just as" — creates an equation: honour given to the Son must match the honour given to the Father in kind and degree. How does a Witness honour the Father? Through worship, prayer, praise, and the giving of the heart. Kathōs demands the same for the Son. If Jesus is a creature, commanding equal divine honour is commanding idolatry. If he is God, the command makes perfect sense. And the negative clause closes the door: "whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father." Withholding equal honour from the Son means a Witness is not truly honouring Jehovah either, by Jesus' own statement. The verse is one of the strongest deity-of-Christ proof-texts the NWT itself preserves intact — and it bypasses the proskuneō / obeisance debate entirely because the Greek word here is timaō ("honour"), not proskuneō.