For centuries the cross has been used by people in Christendom as part of their worship. The New Encyclopedia Britannica calls the cross “the principal symbol of the Christian religion.” But is the cross really a Christian symbol? Though not everyone does it for religious reasons, wearing a cross, or having tattoos of crosses, has become fashionable in some parts of the world. But is it really proper for a Christian to give such admiration to the cross? And are there any reasons we wouldn’t use it in an ornamental way? Does the cross accurately portray the way Christ died? To see let us take a look at the origin of the cross.

You might think that Christians were the first to use the cross. Yet the Encyclopedia Americana speaks of “its use in . . . ancient China, Persia, Assyria and Babylonian.” Similarly, Chambers’s Encyclopaedia says that the cross “was an emblem to which religious and mystical meanings were attached long before the Christian era.”

According to Bible Scholar W.E. Vine: “The shape of the cross had its origin in ancient Babylon, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the initial of his name) in that country and in Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd century C.E. the churches had departed from some doctrines of the Christian faith. Pagans were received into the churches and were permitted to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the T, or Tau, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.”

In fact, there is no evidence that early Christians used the cross in their worship or for any other reason. During the years leading upto the birth of Christianity, it was the pagan Romans who used the cross! The Companion Bible says: “These crosses were used as symbols of the Babylonian sun-god . . . and are first seen on a coin of Julius Caesar, in the first century B.C.E.” How, then, did the cross become the symbol of Christendom?

The book Dual Heritage—The Bible and the British Museum states: “It may come as a shock to know that there is no word such as ‘cross’ in the Greek of the New Testament. The cross was not originally a Christian symbol; it is derived from Egypt and Emperor Constantine.” The New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “The representation of Christ’s death does not occur in the art of the early Christian centuries. The early Christians, influenced by the Old Testament [ban on idolatry], were reluctant to depict even the instrument of the Lord’s [death]. . . . The cross first comes to be represented in the time of Constantine.”

Constantine was the Roman emperor in the fourth century C.E. He promoted the unscriptural doctrine that Christ was God. He did this to unify his empire of pagans and apostate Christians. Regarding him, The New Encyclopedia Britannica says: “On the eve of Constantine’s victory over his brother-in-law Maxentius in 312 C.E., he claims he saw a vision of the ‘heavenly sign’ of the cross, on which were the words “Hoc Vince,” meaning, “By this conquer.” He claimed this to be a divine guarantee of his victory.”

After his victory, Constantine made the cross the standard of his armies and promoted its worship. When Christianity later became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the cross became the symbol of the church.

However, would God give a sign to a pagan leader who was not doing God’s will, and a pagan sign at that? And can we believe that such a vision actually took place? Accounts of this tale are, at best, second-hand and full of discrepancies.

Frankly, it would be difficult to find a more unlikely candidate for a divine revelation than Constantine. At the time of this supposed event, he was an avid sun-god worshiper, and his conduct after his so-called conversion gave little evidence of real dedication to right principles. Murder, deception, and political ambition ruled his life. It seems that for Constantine, Christianity was little more than a political device to unite a disorganized empire.

The book Strange Survivals says of Constantine and his cross: “The symbol he set up gratified the Christians in his army on one side, and the [pagan] Gaul’s on the other. . . . To the latter it was a sign of the favour of their sun god,” whom they worshiped. So, Constantine’s ‘heavenly sign’ had nothing to do with God or Christ but is steeped in paganism.

Did anything else contribute to the cross becoming such an object of worship? The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics says: “In the 4th century magical belief began to take a firmer hold within the Church.” As with a magic charm, simply making the sign of the cross was thought to be “the surest defence against demons, and the remedy for all diseases.” “But does not the Bible teach that Christ actually died on a cross?” someone may ask. To answer this, we must look into the meanings of the two Greek words that the Bible writers used to describe the instrument of Christ’s death: stauros and xy′lon.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states under the heading ‘Cross’: “The original Greek word stauros designated a pointed, vertical wooden stake firmly fixed in the ground. . . . They were positioned side by side in rows to form fencing around settlements, or singly they were set up as instruments of torture on which serious offenders of law were publicly suspended to die.”

The instrument of Jesus’ death is noted in Bible passages, such as at Matthew 27:32 (Interlinear). There the Greek word stauros is translated “cross” in various English Bibles. But what did stauros mean in the first century when the Greek Scriptures were written? Scholar W. E. Vine, says: “Stauros denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such, criminals were nailed for execution. The stauros was originally distinguished from the religious view of a two beamed cross.”

What of the other Greek word, xy′lon? Numerous translators of the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament) translate Peter’s words at Acts 5:30 (Interlinear) as: “stake “[or, “tree,” according to other translations]. According to Scholar W.E. Vine xy’lon refers to “a piece of wood, timber, or a staff”.

The book The Non-Christian Cross adds: “There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings of the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary pole or stake; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross.”

The Companion Bible, under the heading “The Cross and Crucifixion,” notes: “Our English word ‘cross’ is the translation of the Latin crux;’ The word stauros meant a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning of the word throughout Greek literature. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another. . . . There is nothing in the Greek of the New Testament to imply two pieces of timber.”

The Romans did use an instrument of execution known in Latin as the crux. And in translating the Bible into Latin, this word crux was used as a replacement for stauros. Because the Latin word crux and the English word cross are similar, many mistakenly assume that a crux was a stake with a crossbeam. However, The Imperial Bible-Dictionary says: “Even amongst the Romans the crux appears to have been originally an upright pole.”

Even after considering such evidence that Christ really died on a stake, some may still see nothing wrong with admiring or wearing a cross. ‘It’s just an ornament,’ they may say.

Bear in mind, though, how the cross has been used down through history—as an object of pagan worship and of superstitious fear. Could wearing a cross, even as just an ornament, be in harmony with the counsel of the apostle Paul at 1 Corinthians 10:14 and 1 John 5:21?

Even if we ignore all the evidence and assume that Jesus was killed on a cross, should it be worshipped? No, for Jesus was executed as a criminal, like the men impaled alongside him, and his manner of death misrepresented him in the worst way. First-century Christians would not have viewed the instrument of his execution as sacred. Venerating it would have meant glorifying the wrong deed committed on it, the murder of Jesus.

If your best friend were executed on false charges, would you make an image of the instrument of execution (say a hangman’s noose or an electric chair or the rifle of a firing squad), or wear it around your neck as a sacred ornament? That would be unthinkable. So, too, with the worship of the cross. The fact that the cross is of pagan origin only makes the matter worse.

The worship of the cross is not Christian. It does not show love for God or Christ but mocks what they stand for. It violates God’s commandments against idolatry. It worships a pagan symbol masquerading as Christian.