---
title: Romans 14:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/romans-14-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/romans-14-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Romans 14:4
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Romans 14:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): ""for Jehovah can make him stand""
- NWT (2013 revision): "Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for Jehovah can make him stand."

## JW Usage

JWs treat Romans 14:4 as a warning against judging fellow Witnesses on matters of conscience — but in practice, the Watchtower's elder-led judicial committees stand as the authorised exception to Paul's rule, examining the brother's spiritual standing through observable behaviour as the basis for reproof or removal.

## Protestant Usage

Paul's question — "Who are you to judge the servant of another?" — is the apostolic limit on community judgment. The brother's standing before God is not the elders' to verify week by week through performance metrics; it is between him and his Lord. And Paul adds the load-bearing promise: "he will be made to stand, for Jehovah can make him stand" (NWT 2013) — the perseverance is divine, not procedural. The community's role after a fall is restoration in gentleness (Galatians 6:1), burden-bearing (Galatians 6:2), and mutual confession (James 5:16) — not surveillance and graded reinstatement. Use this verse to expose the structural critique: the public-reproof comment-restoration system replaces the Lord's keeping with the elders' grading.

## NWT Issue

The NWT 2013 inserts "Jehovah" at the end of the verse — "for Jehovah can make him stand" — where the underlying Greek reads ho kurios ("the Lord"). In context, the Lord here is Christ (the preceding verses speak of the Lord under whom the believer stands or falls — Christ the master, not the Father directly). The insertion of "Jehovah" obscures Paul's Christological point: Christ is the master who keeps his servants standing. The doctrinal cost is small here because the verse functions primarily for the church-discipline argument, not for deity, but the insertion is a NWT pattern worth noting.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Public Reproof and Comment Performance — A Yoke of Slavery](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/public-reproof-performance-discipline.md) — Galatians 5:1 — For freedom Christ has set us free [Sanctification]
- [What Is Still Forbidden?](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/blood-still-forbidden.md) — Four components, whole blood, and the line no verse draws [Authority]