The Law of Forgiveness

The Law of Forgiveness is the moral and spiritual principle that Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff discovers in the final pages of Resurrection, and it provides the answer to the novel's central question: how can human beings escape the endless cycle of judgment, punishment, and evil that has corrupted society and destroyed lives like Katerina Maslova's and Anatole Kryltzoff's? The law is drawn directly from Christ's teaching in the Gospel of Matthew, specifically the command to forgive "until seventy times seven" and the parable of the unmerciful servant, which Nekhludoff reads in the Englishman's gift Testament on the night after Kryltzoff's death and Maslova's final refusal of his marriage offer. His recognition that no human being has the right to punish another, because all are guilty before God, constitutes the climax of his spiritual awakening and the book's thematic resolution.

The Scriptural Foundation

The Law of Forgiveness is grounded in two passages from Matthew 18 that Nekhludoff reads in sequence. First, Peter asks Jesus, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" and Jesus answers, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." Immediately following this, Jesus tells the parable of a king who forgives a servant a debt of ten thousand talents, but that same servant then refuses to forgive a fellow servant a debt of a hundred pence and has him cast into prison. When the king hears of this, he calls the servant "Thou wicked servant" and delivers him to the tormentors. Nekhludoff, reading these words, suddenly exclaims aloud, "And is this all?" and the inner voice of his whole being answers, "Yes, it is all." The parable crystallizes for him the entire structure of human injustice he has witnessed: men who have themselves been forgiven an infinite debt by God nevertheless insist on exacting the last penny from their fellow men, and the result is the prison system, the courts, the floggings, the exiles, and the deaths he has seen.

The Revelation of the Five Commandments

Reading the Sermon on the Mount, Nekhludoff sees for the first time not abstract, impossible ideals but "simple, clear, practical laws" whose observance would establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. He identifies five such laws: first, that a man shall not only not murder but shall not even be angry with his brother, and shall be reconciled before offering his gift to God; second, that he shall not only not commit adultery but shall not even look on a woman with desire, and shall be faithful to the woman he has once joined himself to; third, that he shall never bind himself by an oath; fourth, that he shall not demand an eye for an eye but shall turn the other cheek and never refuse service; fifth, that he shall not only not hate his enemy but shall love him, help him, and serve him. These five commandments, Nekhludoff realizes, are not a burden but a liberation: they are the only reasonable meaning of human life, and every deviation from them is a mistake that brings its own retribution.

The Parable of the Vineyard and the Master's Will

The parable of the vineyard, which Nekhludoff also recalls, reinforces this insight. The husbandmen imagine that the vineyard they have been sent to work is their own, that everything in it is for their enjoyment, and they forget the Master and kill those who remind them of His existence. Nekhludoff sees that he and all men have done exactly this: they have imagined themselves masters of their own lives, that life is given for pleasure, and they have therefore felt unhappy, like labourers who do not fulfil their Master's orders. The Master's will is expressed in the five commandments, and if men will only obey them, the Kingdom of Heaven will be established on earth and men will receive the greatest good they can attain. "Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

The Practical Solution to the Problem of Evil

The Law of Forgiveness provides Nekhludoff with the answer he had been unable to find throughout his journey. The terrible evil he has witnessed in the prisons and halting stations—the sunstroke deaths, the flogging of Vasiliev and Nepomnishy, the suicide of Neveroff, the death of Kryltzoff, the degradation of hundreds of innocent men—all of it, he now sees, flows from the single error of men trying to correct evil while being evil themselves. Vicious men try to correct other vicious men by mechanical means, and the only result is that the punishers themselves become utterly corrupt and go on unceasingly depraving those they torment. The usual objection—"What is one to do with evil-doers? Surely not let them go unpunished?"—no longer confuses him, because punishment has been proved not to lessen crime or improve the criminal. The only reasonable thing is to stop doing what is useless, harmful, immoral, and cruel. Society and order exist not because of judges and jailers, but because in spite of all this depravity, men still pity and love one another.

The New Life

Nekhludoff does not sleep that night. He reads the Gospels until morning, and everything he reads seems to confirm and consolidate what he had long known but never fully believed. The new life that dawns for him is not a change in external conditions but a transformation of meaning: everything he does after that night has a new and quite different significance. The novel ends with the words, "How this new period of his life will end time alone will prove," leaving the reader with the understanding that the Law of Forgiveness is not a final answer but a beginning—the only foundation on which a just and human life can be built.