Imagine for a moment that you owe someone a staggering amount of money—let’s say a billion dollars.

There is no way that you would ever be able to pay it off.

In order for you to be rescued from this predicament, a very wealthy and generous person would have to pay it for you.

The sin debt we owe to God is not monetary, but moral, but the principle is the same.

No amount of good deeds on our part would be sufficient to atone for our sins.

We need a Savior whose righteousness far exceeds our own.

When talking with Jehovah’s Witnesses, show them verses which show the magnitude of our sin debt.

Make sure the Witnesses understand that you believe we all start out in the same predicament.

Challenge Watchtower teaching by asking stone-in-the-shoe questions:

  • How worthy can we make ourselves?

Ask one of the Witnesses to read about Isaiah 64:6: “And we have all become like someone unclean, and all our acts of righteousness are like a menstrual cloth. We will all wither like a leaf, and our errors will carry us off like the wind.”

Ask:

  • If that is how our limited human righteousness appears to God, what must our sins look like to him?
  • Given that, how “worthy” can we by our own efforts prove to be?

Ask one of the Witnesses to read aloud Romans 5:6-8: “For, indeed, while we were still weak, Christ died for ungodly men at the appointed time. For hardly would anyone die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone may dare to die. But God recommends his own love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Ask:

  • Why did Christ die for the ungodly rather than for those who prove worthy?

The answer is that none of us can prove worthy.

If we could prove worthy, we wouldn’t need his righteousness.

Christ came to die for the morally bankrupt, for the ungodly.

Is keeping God’s Law the answer to our sin problem?

Ask the Witnesses to read aloud Romans 3:19-20: “Now we know that all the things the Law says, it addresses to those under the Law, so that every mouth may be silenced and all the world may become accountable to God for punishment. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous before him by works of law, for by law comes the accurate knowledge of sin.”

Ask the Witnesses if they would agree with these statements:

  • God’s law functions like a cancer screening test. It can show us our dire spiritual condition, but it can do nothing to cure us.
  • God did not give us the law as a means of making us righteous. Rather, he gave the law in order to demonstrate to us the extent of our unrighteousness.
  • He did this to bring us to Christ by showing us our need to have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us as a gift.

Ask one of the Witnesses to read aloud Galatians 3:24: “So the Law became our guardian leading to Christ, so that we might be declared righteous through faith.”

Ask the other Witness to read aloud Romans 3:21-28:

But now apart from law God’s righteousness has been revealed, as the Law and the Prophets bear witness, yes, God’s righteousness through the faith in Jesus Christ, for all those who have faith. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and it is as a free gift that they are being declared righteous by his undeserved kindness through the release by the ransom paid by Christ Jesus. God presented him as an offering for propitiation through faith in his blood. This was to demonstrate his own righteousness, because God in his forbearance was forgiving the sins that occurred in the past. This was to demonstrate his own righteousness in this present season, so that he might be righteous even when declaring righteous the man who has faith in Jesus. Where, then, is the boasting? There is no place for it. Through what law? That of works? No indeed, but through the law of faith. For we consider that a man is declared righteous by faith apart from works of law.

Ask:

  • Is this remedy for any of us or only for the 144,000?

If necessary, show them that verse 22 says that this righteousness of God is “for all those who have faith.”

  • Would you agree that salvation is not something we can receive only if we first prove worthy of it?

If they disagree with that conclusion, ask one of them to read aloud and explain the meaning of Romans 4:4-5: “Now to the man who works, his pay is not counted as an undeserved kindness but as something owed to him. On the other hand, to the man who does not work but puts faith in the One who declares the ungodly one righteous, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

Summary

The purpose of these stones-in-the-shoe questions is to show the Witnesses that we get the remedy for payment for our sins by receiving the righteousness of Christ by faith as a gift apart from works.

It’s only after that experience that the good works are produced.


 

 

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