Ben Sasse driven to tears expressing hope of Gospel amid terminal cancer: 'Not the end of the story'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Former Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., was overcome with emotion during a recent interview as he described the hope and comfort that the righteousness of Jesus Christ has brought him as he faces imminent death from Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

"We're all on the clock, but knowing that your death is impending sooner gives you an even greater ability to deny any of our righteous acts as righteous," Sasse, 53, said during an hour-long conversation posted Wednesday with his longtime friends, Reformed theologian Michael Horton and Dan Bryant, a former assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sasse, who served as the director of Horton's White Horse Inn and executive editor of Modern Reformation at the Christian media company Sola Media before entering politics, said the terminal illness he first announced publicly last December has clarified to him the heart of the Gospel and his own inability to justify himself before God.

"The foolishness of our works are pretty apparent to you when you try to really look at the accounting of a life," he said, adding, "Jesus did everything on the cross to fulfill the whole law. I fulfilled none of it. He fulfilled all of it."

Citing Genesis 3 and Romans 5, Sasse acknowledged his subjection to the Curse, but grew emotional describing the kindness of Christ in laying aside His glory to restore fellowship with sinners.

"I am, in Adam, a member of this rebellious race — imago Dei, we were created glorious in God's image and meant for fellowship with Him, and yet we're a part of this rebel clan of everybody," he said.

"And that's not the end of the story. The end of the story is the new Adam came from Heaven, laid down all of His prerogatives and came and swept us up," he added through tears.

"The foolishness of our works are pretty apparent to you when you look at the accounting of a life. . .Jesus did everything on the cross to fulfill the whole law. I fulfilled none of it. He fulfilled all of it."

— @BenSassepic.twitter.com/d1E5A802QQ

— Sola Media (@solamediaorg) February 18, 2026

Horton, who also serves as professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, responded to Sasse's heartfelt description of the Gospel by citing Ephesians 2:6, where the Apostle Paul writes of being raised with Jesus to the heavenly places, and 2 Corinthians 4:7-16, where he writes of the eternal hope of glory amid temporal affliction and death.

"The 'weight of glory' Paul talks about is so great, it's not even worth comparing the sufferings of this age and of our lives right now to that weight of glory that will appear in us," said Horton, who noted Paul repeatedly experienced profound suffering during his ministry and was not attempting to be dismissive of pain.

"[Even Paul] can say, not that this is unimportant, this is insignificant at all, but glory is so great that this suffering right now seems like, in retrospect, it will seem like a light and momentary affliction," Horton said.

Sasse, who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment and was evidently suffering physically throughout the interview, also explained that the Lord has used his illness to strip him of the things in which he once placed inordinate value.

"I have a bunch of tumors that have grown in and around my spinal column, and so, I had some tough pain that was hard to make sense of," he said. "And it definitely shattered idols really fast; lots of dumb stuff that I cared too much about, and I was too self-reliant about, seemed really pointless."

Sasse said he has been reminded amid his physical pain of the words of the late Rev. Tim Keller, who was also stricken with pancreatic cancer and claimed amid his own suffering that while he hated his illness, he would "never want to go back to the prayer life I had before cancer."

Remembering how, before his diagnosis, he would have to take hot showers every 20 minutes to relieve the pain in his back that would shoot to his abdomen, Sasse said, "I felt then, what a blessing that I'm saying, 'Lord, come quickly, Maranatha. Thank you for all of the different things that I used to cling to that right now seem really, really trivial, because they're actually really trivial.'"

Looking back, Sasse said he regrets having devoted so much time to his work to the detriment of observing the Sabbath.

"One thing I tell my kids a lot is, 'Man, I wish I'd taken the Lord's Day more seriously more in my life, because it's a really good antidote to all those idolatries.' God smashing idols for us is a blessing, and having a death sentence is a really good way."

Sasse represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023 before resigning mid-term to serve as president of the University of Florida. In his Dec. 23 post to X announcing his diagnosis, which he called "a death sentence," Sasse expressed love for his wife, Melissa, and pride in the recent accomplishments of his three children — his daughters, Corrie and Alex, and his 14-year-old son, Breck.