Johnny Cash has always been one of my favorite singers and songwriters. In addition, his life was a perfect example of the ongoing struggle between spirituality and the flesh. Johnny rebelled with hard living, drugs and alcohol, but his rough life always convicted him to seek a spiritual answer to the evils of the flesh. In his biography, his daughter Roseanne makes an interesting observation about her dad. Roseanne said, “I don’t think that he believed that having faith had anything to do with being good.” Johnny was nothing if not profound, and, in true fashion, this statement is both true and false.
Of course, the Bible commands us to be good, but the problem is that we’ve all done bad deeds, along with our good works. Many people mistakenly believe that salvation is achieved through one’s good works and deeds. This doctrine teaches that God will somehow decide our eternal fate by weighing our good deeds against our bad deeds. Although we will all be judged, this doctrine confuses two forms of judgment. We will all be judged as to whether or not we claim Christ as our Savior from our sins, and this judgment will determine whether or not we will spend eternity with God. In additions, believers will then indeed be judged to determine their additional eternal rewards, and this judgment is indeed based our good works.
However, the question of our salvation is decided by one simple thing, and it’s not our good deeds. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). The Bible offers more clarity on this fact than anything else. One of the many places where this is emphatically stated is Galatians 2:16: “Know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.” For a detailed explanation on this doctrine, please go to Salvation by Grace.
So, on the one hand, the observation about Johnny Cash is true, because it can indeed be said that faith has nothing to do with being good. However, this is only try if we are talking about our being good by our own means. If we could live a sinless life, we might have an argument for going to heaven based upon our good deeds, and the complete absence of bad deeds in our lives. However, we have all sinned (Romans 3:23), so none of us could get to heaven on this basis.
However, from another perspective, God indeed demands righteousness. God cannot allow sinful men into heaven, as this would corrupt the perfection there. Thankfully, His plan of grace provides an answer for even this. When we are saved, many great things occur, in addition to receiving eternal life with God. One of the greatest things is that Jesus imputes His perfect righteousness to us (Imputation). Now, when God looks at a believer, He sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ–not the sins of the believer, because Christ’s death on the cross was the perfect sacrifice for those sins.
So, in this way, the observation about Johnny cash is not true. Faith does indeed have a lot to do with being good. In order to enter heaven, we have to be perfect, but the only way we can be perfect is for Jesus Christ to impute His perfect righteousness to us.