“We got accepted on Dec. 29 at a clinical trial in Houston. And so MD Anderson is my hospital of choice,” said Sasse. MD Anderson Cancer Center is one of the top cancer centers in the world.
“I’m hospitalized for a few days every week there. And we’re in a super aggressive clinical trial, where I’m taking, you know, chemotherapy, which is a societally polite term for ‘poison yourself,’” he said. “What’s the maximum dose of poison you can try to put into the tumors without killing yourself? And so we’re trying to shrink these tumors for a while.”
“And it seems to be going pretty great, except my liver and kidneys are having a little trouble keeping up with all the poison from me,” Sasse continued. “I have trouble maintaining skin on my face. So I bleed a lot out of my face and I puke a lot, like everybody on chemo. But overall very, very blessed with the team that we have and what we’re working through.”
The men discussed the history of their friendship and how they and their families have maintained close relationships for 33 years. The conversation then moved on to what the gospel is.
“We’re all on the clock,” said Sasse. “But knowing that your death is impending sooner gives you an even greater ability to deny any of our righteous acts as righteous. The foolishness of our works are pretty apparent to you when you try to really look at the accounting of a life.”
Horton defined the gospel as “God for us in Christ,” which Sasse said was “great shorthand.” Sasse defined the gospel as “imputation and justification and sanctification, which will be completed and perfected at glorification.”
“Jesus did everything on the cross to fulfill the whole law. I fulfilled none of it,” he said. “He fulfilled all of it. And he took away all of my sins. And I’m not just justified. I’m actually being made intrinsically righteous, though you can’t see it, like so little fruit and buds, but it will be accomplished.”
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Later, Sasse addressed his time in the Senate and how he brought his faith to that and every part of his life. “Right now, we have a weird, weird—I don’t want to use the word ‘gnostic’—but a weird kind of split where most people are just completely disengaged from public life,” he said. “And the people who are engaged in public life pretend that whatever they’re doing in the institutions and the sectors they’re working in are ultimate and transcendent.”
When Sasse revealed to the public in December that he had cancer, he said, “A well-lived life demands more reality—stiffer stuff.” Ellaborating on what he meant by “stiffer stuff,” Sasse referenced Ecclesiastes and Job and said, “I think acknowledging mortality is just fundamental wisdom…telling the truth about death is really important.”
