---
title: 1 Corinthians 1:23
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-1-23/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-1-23.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Corinthians 1:23
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Corinthians 1:23

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

## JW Usage

The NWT rewords Paul's "Christ crucified" around the torture-stake theology. JW commentary treats the verse primarily as a statement about gospel opposition — Jews and Gentiles found the crucifixion a scandal and foolishness — and rarely dwells on its Watchtower- specific tension: Paul calls preaching about the instrument the gospel centre, while the Watchtower teaches that remembering that same instrument in any cross-shaped form is pagan. The NWT's stauros-family rendering further distances English readers from how early Christians (and even hostile pagan witnesses like the Alexamenos graffito) actually described the execution.

## Protestant Usage

1:23 is Paul's pivot inside the cross-preaching flow — the message IS the cross, and its offensiveness is the point. Use it in the cross-pagan-symbol chain: "Paul spent his whole ministry preaching a 'stumbling block' and 'foolishness' — the instrument of execution. The rhetorical question rs asks — 'would you cherish the instrument?' — is the same question first-century hearers threw at Paul, and his answer was that the offensiveness of the instrument was the point." Pair with Galatians 6:14 (Paul boasts in the stake) and 1 Corinthians 1:18 (preaching the stake is God's power). The Watchtower and Paul cannot both be right about whether the cross is something to remember.

## NWT Issue

Part of the NWT's systematic *stauroō* → "impale" / "execute on the stake" rendering across the New Testament (46 occurrences). Where mainstream translations have "Christ crucified," the NWT restructures Paul's cross-preaching language around the Watchtower stake theology. The Kingdom Interlinear itself renders *stauroō* literally as "to stake"; mainstream scholarship from hostile pagan witnesses (Tacitus, Lucian, the Alexamenos graffito c. AD 200) through secular historians (Ehrman, Crossan, Hengel) converges on a crossbeam. The effect on English readers is to make a shape-of-wood distinction carry the verse's theological weight, when Paul's own weight is on the accomplishment of the atonement, not the geometry of the execution.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Cross Is Not Pagan — And Paul Boasted In It](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/cross-pagan-symbol-rebuttal.md) — Galatians 6:14 / 1 Corinthians 1:18 / Colossians 2:14 [Practice]