I. There is a use of the word "cosmos" in Scripture to which the test of its crucifixion by the Cross perfectly answers. This is the cosmos not of nature and not of man as God created either; not the beautiful universe in which philosophers and poets, and simple loving souls which are neither, delight to revel and expatiate; not the race made in God's image, partaking of His intelligence, and His forethought, and His sympathy, and His love, and even in its ruins prognosticating reconstruction; but that aspect, that element, of each which sin has defiled: matter as the foe of spirit and man as the bond-slave of the devil. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, this is the world. To have these things in the heart is to be worldly. This is the disease, the threefold disease, which Christ came to heal when He undertook the cure of worldliness.
II. In the crucifixion by the Cross there are two stages. (1) There is, first, a testimony. The Cross is a witness. It gives evidence against the world. The Cross is evidence against the vanity of worldliness; bids the man who would be a man do battle for the thing that is and look for his reward to a world not of shadows and to a life not of time. (2) The Cross is a power too. That ugly, that repulsive, that horrible, object, that frightful, that revolting, execution, that gibbet accursed of God and man, has become the magnet of humanity. Christ foretold it, and it is true. Wheresoever the Gospel of the Cross and the Crucified is preached there are found practical evidences "infallible proofs" St. Luke would call them of the power of the Cross to crucify men to the world. Not by trickery or magic, not by accident or machinery, but by the Spirit of the living God, is this influence upon hearts and lives wrought. Christ crucified becomes in His turn the mutual Crucifier of man and the world.
C. J. Vaughan, Simple Sermons,p. 113.
References: Galatians 6:14. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1859; Bishop M. Simpson, Sermons,p. 241; Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 95; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 94; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 397; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 106; vol. iv., p. 164.Galatians 6:14; Galatians 6:15. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., pp. 181, 364.Galatians 6:15. F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 49; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Maryborough College,p. 449; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. i., p. 80; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vii., p. 93.Galatians 6:15; Galatians 6:16. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 26.