Why Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Not Use the Cross in Worship?
Jehovah’s Witnesses firmly believe that the death of Jesus Christ provided the ransom that opens the door to everlasting life for those who exercise faith in him. (Matthew 20:28; John 3:16)
However, they do not believe that Jesus died on a cross, as is often depicted in traditional pictures. It is their belief that Jesus died on an upright stake with no crossbeam....
...The use of the cross can be traced back to Mesopotamia, to two thousand years before Christ. Crosses even decorated Scandinavian rock engravings during the Bronze Age, centuries before Jesus was born...
...Vine further notes that both the noun “cross” and the verb “crucify” refer to “a stake or pale . . . distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross.”...
...In all matters of worship, Jehovah’s Witnesses, like the first-century Christians, strive to follow the Bible rather than tradition. (Romans 3:4; Colossians 2:8)
Because of this, they do not use the cross in worship.
That Jesus paid a price for us with his life is all the matters, as you state. However, for the sake of argument, let us consider what has been opined:
Vine is in error when calling the English noun "Cross" and the English verb "Crucify", as coming from the same root syntax, let alone being a simple stake in the ground, from which something is hung. The actual root is "Crux", which is Latin for Cross, as in cross roads, crossed objects intersecting each other perpendicular.
The English term "Crucify" comes from another Latin root syntax derived from the word "Crucible", which means challenge, or tribulation, or testing through difficult times and situations.
Hence the statement "To be crucified on a cross", would in and of itself be a double entendre, and incorrect grammar, if both variants came from one root word (crux). But taken into proper context, the observer would recognize the sentence literally means "To endure a crucible on a cross of (wood, metal, road, challenging life situation, whatever is crossed). Consider the statement "You crossed me", which literally means one has gone perpandicular to another, by wish, or by act. Then there is "I feel, or am being crucified", which means to be placed in a difficult,harrowing, impossible, troubling, terrifying situation. It does not mean one is at the "crux" (or decision point), of the matter...
Finally, if JWs accept Vine's definition of a cross as being a stake by which one is hung, then the only issue would be the visual image most Christians imagine, verses the visual image JWs would imagine at Christ being hung to die. By Vine's definition, JWs would have to admit that the stake Christ was hung on was in fact called "a cross".
The reality is that regardless of how a Cross is envisioned, Christ was hung and died on "a dead tree" (wood).
The rest is semantics...
