1 Corinthians 1:13
1 Corinthians 1:1313Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
Read as a rebuke of the personality cults dividing Corinth, which the Watchtower contrasts with its own unity. The verse is not usually connected to the JW baptismal questions, in which a candidate publicly affirms that their dedication and baptism identify them as one of Jehovah's Witnesses associated with God's spirit-directed organisation.
Paul asks three rhetorical questions and expects "no" to all of them. The third is the one to sit with: were you baptised in the name of Paul? His point is that baptism attaches a person to Christ and to no one else. Attaching it to any other name — even an apostle's — is the error he is writing to correct. and say believers were baptised into Christ; gives the formula, into the name of the Father, the Son and the holy spirit. Then lay the second JW baptismal question beside it. Since 1985 the candidate is asked, in front of the congregation, whether they understand that their dedication and baptism identify them as one of Jehovah's Witnesses in association with God's spirit-directed organisation. The 1955 form did not include the organisation. The question to ask is Paul's own, gently redirected: who did you belong to when you came up out of the water? Compare , , .
The NWT reads "Paul was not executed on the stake for you, was he?" The Greek verb is stauroo, "to crucify." The NWT renders the whole word group with "stake" and "execute on the stake" throughout, in line with the Watchtower's teaching that Jesus died on an upright pole rather than a cross. The choice is doctrinal rather than lexical — by the first century stauros was the ordinary word for a Roman execution cross, and has Thomas speak of the nails, plural, in Jesus' hands.