Galatians 6:14
Galatians 6:1414But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
The Watchtower has taught since 1936 that the cross is of pagan origin and that Christians should not display or venerate representations of it. Reasoning From the Scriptures (pp. 89-93) argues the Greek stauros meant "upright stake" and the crossbeam form was a later syncretistic corruption. in the NWT — "may I never boast, except in the torture stake of our Lord Jesus Christ" — is not typically cited, because Paul's boast sits awkwardly next to the organisational teaching that displaying the same instrument is pagan.
Paul's boast is the gospel fault line at the door, and the NWT brings it into sharp relief. The same verse the Watchtower condemns "cherishing the instrument" for — Paul uses to say he boasts in nothing else. Pair the verse with ("the speech about the torture stake is God's power" — NWT) and ("he nailed it to the torture stake" — NWT, the sin-debt cancelled there). The point is not the shape of the wood. The point is that Paul's whole gospel is cruciform: the offensiveness of the execution is where God's justice met his love. The doorstep question: "Brother, your own NWT has Paul boasting in the torture stake, preaching it as God's power, and picturing our sin nailed to it. The Watchtower tells you remembering that stake is pagan. Paul and the Watchtower are not on the same page — which of them are you going to follow?"
The NWT renders stauros as "torture stake" at every one of its ~27 NT occurrences, and the verb stauroō as "impale" (1984) or "put to death" on a stake (2013); every major English translation reads "cross" and "crucify." The rendering is historically defensible for classical (pre-Roman) usage but is out of step with the archaeological and literary consensus for first-century Roman crucifixion (Giv'at ha-Mivtar heel-bone, Alexamenos graffito, staurogram ligature in P66/P75). The 2013 revision softened "impaled to me" to "put to death with regard to me," quietly moving away from the starkest 1984 paraphrase.