The Greek word translated "cross" in the New Testament, stauros, simply means a stake or pole, and it was used for pieces of wood of various shapes, including those with crosspieces. The Romans who crucified Christ used instruments of differing forms: upright timbers, or timbers with crosspieces at or just below the top. Other biblical writers call the instrument of Christ's death a tree (Acts 5:30; 13:29-30; 1 Peter 2:24; see also Acts 10:39; Galatians 3:13). Whether this wording is descriptive or literal cannot be determined, but when time was short, as at Jesus' trial and crucifixion, the Romans are known to have used living trees for crucifixions. The Bible gives no description of the specific stauros on which Christ died, and if its shape mattered, God would have supplied more information. What matters is Christ's sacrifice and what He is doing now, not the exact shape of the wood. The prominence of the traditional cross in pagan religious custom should give pause for thought.

Two Greek words in the New Testament describe the instrument of Jesus' death: xulon, meaning tree (as in Acts 5:30), and stauros, meaning stake, which appears 28 times. Vine's Expository Dictionary says stauros denotes primarily an upright pole or stake on which malefactors were nailed, and that the verb stauroo means to fasten to a stake or pole. Both are to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical two-beamed cross, whose shape came from ancient Chaldea, where it was the mystic tau, the initial of the sun god Tammuz. By the middle of the third century, churches had admitted pagans without regeneration and let them keep their symbols, so the T was adopted to stand for Christ's cross. Robert Young's concordance renders stauros as stake, yet his New Testament translation renders all 28 occurrences as cross. Constantine's shield symbol was the Greek chi (X), the initial of Christ, not a cross. The exact form of the instrument, whether tree, stake, or cross, is not the real issue. What matters is that Christ died for the sins of His creation. Exodus 20:4-5 forbids making or bowing to any image, and the bronze serpent Hezekiah destroyed in II Kings 18:4 shows that venerating a symbol is idolatry. A pagan symbol cannot honor Christ.