Luke 3:14
Luke 3:1414Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” “Do not take money by force or false accusation,” he said. “Be content with your wages.”
is one of the New Testament passages JW publications most carefully avoid in the firearms-and-careers context, because John the Baptist's answer to the soldiers is so obviously not what the Watchtower would have said. JWs generally treat the verse as a brief ethical instruction about contentment and integrity rather than as the apostolic pattern for armed converts.
Soldiers come to John, freshly repentant, and ask the same "what should we do?" question as the crowds in v.10 and the tax collectors in v.12. John's answer is striking for what it does NOT say. He does not tell them to leave the army. He tells them to stop extorting money, stop accusing falsely, and be content with their wages — reform within the office, not departure from it. If a categorical "Christians must not bear arms" rule existed in the New Testament, John the Baptist's answer here would be the place to find it. Instead he gives the answer the Watchtower's categorical position cannot accommodate. Together with Cornelius () and the centurion of great faith (), the verse forms the New Testament's consistent pattern: armed converts remain in their armed callings, with their character reformed.
The NWT renders strateuomenoi as "those in military service" rather than the consensus "soldiers" — a slightly broader abstraction. The choice softens the concrete military identity of the men John addresses, marginally easing the Watchtower's categorical reading of armed-service prohibition. Standard translations (ESV, NASB, NIV, KJV) all read "soldiers." The shift is subtle but consistent with the NWT's tendency to flatten technical military terms (compare "army officer" for hekatontarchēs at , "unit" for speira). The deeper apologetic point sits in the verb "harass" / "do not extort" — John regulates the soldiers' conduct without questioning their armed calling.