The Worldliness, Death, and Salvation of Ivan Ilyich

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”

Many men, blinded by sin and selfishness, recognize this truth tragically too late. Death is our great curse, the penalty of our rebellion against God. Yet God’s redemptive power is greater than our sin. The greatest sin in man’s history was deicide—our God and creator, the maker and sustainer of the universe entered His creation and we murdered Him. God took this unimaginably wicked sin and used it to undo the curse, to free us from sin and the clutches of the devil, and to bring us into a place of new life. God’s redemption is greater than even our greatest sin.

God does not just redeem our sins; in His power He is capable of redeeming even the just consequences of our disobedience. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy shows how God redeems the death of a foolish and worldly man, using the penalty of his sin to free him from sin.

“Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and commonplace—and most horrifying.” Ivan is like most men and most men are worldly, self-indulgent, selfish, and sinful—to live a commonplace life in our fallen world is to life a life apart from Christ, a life that can only end in death and damnation. It is to live, in a word, a horrifying life.

Throughout his life Ivan pursued all that which is easy and pleasant. This keeps him from real relationships with people. He diminishes his wife to a cook, house-cleaner, and partner in bed. She, being a living and breathing woman, is both unwilling and incapable of being reduced to this role. As a human being with free volition she interferes with his pleasant life. For this reason he makes his work the center of his life. Ivan’s work is a place where he can easily abstract himself from himself and live his life passively. He does this by focusing on the tasks at hand while ignoring their significance and the people that his decisions affect.

Ivan’s selfish and shallow approach to life is best embodied in his love of cards. Whist is his central pursuit and consumes the majority of his free time. Why does Ivan love it so much? It is pleasant and it requires nothing of him. 

The faults of Ivan are obvious to most readers, but Ivan is completely blind to them. Everything he does is approved of by those in his society so he has no reason to doubt their morality. Ivan is attracted to man’s approval like a moth to light. When a moth attains its object and reaches the flame it loses its life. In the same way, when society is worldly attaining society’s approval can only come at the cost of losing one’s soul. This is the situation that Ivan is in when his health begins to deteriorate: he has gained the world, but has forfeited his soul.

While Ivan is healthy it is easy for him to ignore the fact that he is in a state of sin and damnation. But illness soon makes him confront his mortality and the way he has lived his life.

While he was healthy cards were his greatest care and pleasure. At one point during his illness he misplayed a trick and lost a hand. This would have been bad enough, but Ivan soon realizes that this doesn’t even bother him. After all, what is one lost trick when one is confronting death? This realization terrifies him.

In the same way, when healthy Ivan was able to abstract himself from his job and his family. When he contemplates his death Ivan realizes he is more than an abstraction. “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal” may be a valid syllogism, but Ivan is more than a syllogism! He is a man with a past, a man with hopes, a man with pain and joy, a man that has loved and been loved—surely his existence cannot be reduced to this cold, hard fact of logic! In order to maximize his tranquility Ivan has been striving to abstract himself from his life. Ironically, in contemplating his death, Ivan comes to realize that he is more than a mere abstraction.

The growing pain that Ivan experiences begins to lead him to question more aspects of his life, but the approval of his fellow man prevents him from discovering the truth. “‘Perhaps I did not live as I should have,’ it suddenly occurred to him. ‘But how could that be when I did everything one is supposed to?’ he replied and immediately dismissed the one solution to the whole enigma of life and death, considering it utterly impossible.” Ivan’s failure to admit his faults keeps him from entering new life. He cannot discover the real purpose of life before admitting that he has been chasing a false purpose; he cannot have forgiveness without first admitting that he is wrong.

On the last day Ivan of his life Ivan finally admits that he had not lived how he ought to have lived. For a while this fills him with fear—he has lived wrong and there is now no time to make amends and live as he ought to live! This despair is graciously short lived. As Ivan seeks truth he quickly finds it. “Yes, all of it was simply not the real thing. But no matter. I can still make it the real thing—I can.”

What is the real thing? It is not found in religious observation. When Ivan receives last rites he immediately declares this is “Not the real thing.” He has a vague sense that the “real thing” has to do with following his conscience and that he ought not have suppressed a natural goodness that he used to have. But the question remains, how can he retrieve that?

It is only when his son kisses his hand that Ivan finds the real thing. What is the “real thing”? It is love—specifically gracious love given to a sinner in spite of his sin. Receiving this unmerited love transforms and regenerates Ivan. He goes from hating his wife to pitying and forgiving her. Instead of clinging to his life for his sake he seeks to die for the sake of others. And his fear of death? “What death? There was no fear because there was no death. Instead of death there was light.”

Death, that which brings an end to life, is used by God to bring life to Ivan. Facing his death forces Ivan to reevaluate his life and admit that his life was not a real life. After he concedes this he is able to enter into true life by means of his death.

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich we see the mystery of redemption and the power of God to redeem the worst of things and the most foolish of men. This work should challenge us to see ourselves in Ivan and examine the unexamined parts of our life. It is appointed unto every man to die. Any fool can see this in the face of death; a wise man will contemplate it when he is brimming with health. Am I living as I ought to live? On what basis do I even answer that question? Am I basing my righteousness on that of Jesus Christ or the applause of my peers? Have I repented of my vain and sinful pursuits? Life is waiting for us, but we can only enter it by dying to ourselves. Reading this novella should lead us to seek our life in Christ now and not wait until it is too late.