---
title: 1 Corinthians 2:8
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-2-8/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-2-8.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Corinthians 2:8
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Corinthians 2:8

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "It is this wisdom that none of the rulers of this system of things came to know, for if they had known it, they would not have executed the glorious Lord."

## JW Usage

The Watchtower's strongest closing move against the deity of Christ is simple and emotionally weighty: God cannot die, Jesus died, therefore Jesus is not God. A verse that has a divine title crucified is therefore read carefully around. In the NWT the title is softened to "the glorious Lord," which makes it easier to hear as an honorific belonging to Jehovah's exalted servant rather than as a claim about who was on the cross.

## Protestant Usage

The New Testament joins the divine identity to the dying on purpose, and this is one of the places it does it most bluntly: they crucified the Lord of glory. Not the servant of the Lord of glory. Paul puts the title and the execution in the same clause. The "God cannot die" objection turns on a confusion between a person and a nature. A person is a who; a nature is a what. The Son is one divine person who took a complete human nature to himself without ceasing to be what he was. The dying happened in the human nature. But natures do not die — persons do, and the person who died is the same person who is God. That is why Paul can write this sentence without qualification, and why Acts 20:28 can speak of the congregation of God purchased with blood. Then add John 10:18, where Jesus says no one takes his life from him, that he lays it down of his own initiative and has authority to take it up again. A creature does not raise itself. Compare James 2:1, Hebrews 5:7.

## NWT Issue

The NWT reads "they would not have executed the glorious Lord." The Greek is ton kyrion tes doxes — "the Lord of glory," a genitive construction, not an adjective. The difference matters because "Lord of glory" is a title with an Old Testament pedigree: Psalm 24 calls Jehovah "the King of glory," and Acts 7:2 speaks of "the God of glory." Turning it into "glorious Lord" converts a divine title into a compliment. The NWT makes the same change at James 2:1, where the Greek again has the genitive.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [If Jesus Is God, Who Raised Him?](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/god-cannot-die-jw-closing.md) — Acts 20:28 / 1 Corinthians 2:8 — the two natures of the one Person [Deity of Christ]