If I am honest before God, I must confess that I am a Sabbath-breaker, and only Christ can save me--not Sabbath-keeping. John 15:12 includes all.
Your idea is that when you have confessed a sin, that is the end of it, and that thereafter you may go on committing the same sin without blame. Or, what amounts to the same thing, you think that acknowledging that a sin is a sin takes away its sinfulness; so that all a man who is transgressing the law needs to do is to say, "I am a sinner, and I know it; I know that the course I am pursuing is wrong;" and that declaration would make him all right! That is very mixed reasoning. Let us try it on something besides Sabbath-breaking.
Here is a man who is a professional burglar. He makes it his business to break into houses, and rob people. And when he is confronted with the commandment which says, "You shall not steal," (Exodus 20:15) he says, "That commandment is just; I am obliged to acknowledge before God that I am a sinner; but Christ alone can save me--not commandment-keeping; so henceforth whenever I steal I shall trust in Christ for salvation from the sinfulness of the act."
What would you say to him? I think you would quote the Scripture: "Whoso covers his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall find mercy." (Proverbs 28:13)
Confession of sin implies the forsaking of it. If one says that he has sinned, and still continues in the same practice, he in reality declares either one or the other of two things:
a) He says, "I know I am a sinner, and I intend to continue in sin;"
b) Or else he by his action denies what his lips uttered.
He certainly does the latter, if he professes to trust in Christ; for, "in Him is no sin." (1 John 3:5)
And so to profess trust in Christ while continuing to commit an acknowledged sin, is to deny the confession, and say that the thing confessed is not sin.
The Apostle Paul asks: "What shall we say then? shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." (Romans 6:1-6)
This is very plain. Christ is not the minister sin. (Galatians 2:17) "He shall save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)
It is true that Sabbath-keeping will not save us, nor will anything else that we do or refrain from doing. "For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained [prepared] that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Our good works cannot save us, for we are not able to do any good thing. But the good works which God has wrought in Christ can save us; and: "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent." (John 6:29) "Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and have the faith of Jesus." (Revelation 14:12)
Note that it is "the faith of Jesus" that we are to keep. Christ declared that He lived by faith in the Father. Thus the works of God were manifest in Him. Now we are to have and to keep the same faith-the faith of Jesus; and this we can do only by having Christ to live in us, exercising His own faith in us, as the Apostle says: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)
It was to enable us to keep the commandments that Christ came. Although the law was "ordained to life," (Romans 7:13) it cannot save us, because our flesh is too weak to do it. So, "What the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans 8:3-4)
Christ did not come to change the law (Matthew 5:17); He came to work a change in the flesh. Christ's life of faith in us is that which keeps us from committing sin. But do not make the sad mistake of supposing that Christ can transform evil into good. A woe is pronounced upon them that call evil good. "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20)
John 15:12 does indeed include all. It says: "This is my commandment, That you love one another, as I have loved you." (John 15:12)
It is true that "Love is the fulfilling of law;" (Romans 13:10) but you must take notice that love is not a substitute for the law, but it is the law itself. "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous." (1 John 5:3)
Love cannot take the place of any commandments; but the keeping of each one of the commandments is an expression of the love of God. "He that has my commandments, and keeps them, He it is that loves me; and He that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love Him, and will manifest myself unto him." (John 14:21)--Present Truth, February 6, 1902.