Kevin Nelson and his family once received a print of Gustave Dore’s “Adam and Eve Driven Out of Eden” as a gift from a congregant. In the work, Adam and Eve stagger toward the viewer surrounded by thorns and thistles, while a sword-wielding angel behind them guards the entrance to Eden.
The congregant was Melissa Sasse, wife of former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse.
Nelson — who pastors Faith Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida — believes the print epitomizes the way the Sasse family approaches life in a fallen world.
“There is meaningful work to be done. There are important things that are good, but [the Sasses] never put their hope in this life … They know that they are here as pilgrims. This is not their home. And yet, it’s a life that has all sorts of beautiful God-given callings, and they want to do as much as they can in this life to serve God and glorify him.”
Nelson said this approach to adversity was true for the Sasse family when Melissa was the only one with serious health challenges. Now that Ben has Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer, the family’s outlook has not changed.
Ben Sasse, a former U.S. Senator from Nebraska and two-time university president, has chosen to spend his remaining days on earth calling Christians and his fellow countrymen to the hard work of institution and community building in the places where God has placed them.
Though the public has recently become acquainted with Ben Sasse’s faith, he and his family have been active participants in Presbyterian congregations for decades. ByFaith spoke with some of the men, like Nelson, who have pastored the Sasse family, and they say Sasse’s public witness is no surprise. They have observed and benefitted from Sasse’s love for the church and genuine faith.
“Better Than I Deserve”
In December 2025, Sasse announced on social media that he had been diagnosed with cancer.
“Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” Sasse, 54, wrote in a post on X on December 23.
Initially, Sasse was given 3-4 months to live, but an experimental drug therapy has given him more time than he initially expected, though the drug, daraxonrasib, has brutal side effects. When Sasse appeared on Ross Douthat’s podcast, “Interesting Times,” his face was caked with dried blood.
“It’s a nasty drug,” Sasse told Douthat. “It causes crazy stuff like my body can’t grow skin, and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding.”
Still, Sasse wouldn’t complain.
“I feel better than I deserve,” he said.
That genuine gratitude has defined how the Sasses have approached life and adversity.
The Sasse family began attending Faith when Sasse became president of the University of Florida in 2023. Nelson recalls the Sasses sharing with him early in their time at Faith about Melissa’s epilepsy diagnosis and the serious impacts it had on the family. Though Melissa’s health has improved, her illness has shaped the way the family sees the world.
“The gospel isn’t a game with them,” Nelson said. “They understand that part of the gospel is the bad news that they are sinners deserving condemnation. So part of how they think about their life is they have gotten far more than they deserve. It’s rare to find people who have been so shaped by the gospel that anything they are experiencing is far better than they deserve. That’s not hagiography. Of course, they hate death. It’s not fun. But they have a strong enough theological conviction that it shapes how they live their lives.”
And regular participation in the life of the church shaped them, too. The Sasses jumped right into church whenever they could. Nelson recalls them bringing food to Easter brunch, hosting congregants in their home, and joining the youth, college, and women’s ministries.
He noted that though Sasse knows his theology, “you’ll never find a more hungry congregant eager to learn from God’s word, excited to learn. The only person who was hungrier than him was his wife, who loved to grow and had millions of questions after sermons.”
That theology shaped Sasse’s view of what matters. His love for the Lord has prodded him to care about institutions from the family and the church to civic institutions like the university and federal government.
‘Not Dead Yet’
Because the daraxonrasib has significantly shrunk his tumors, Sasse is spending his remaining days talking about living with purpose. He and journalist Chris Stirewalt co-host the podcast “Not Dead Yet,” and invite guests to talk with them about what makes a meaningful life. Their guests range from Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to entertainers like Chris Pratt and Conan O’Brien to astronaut Clayton Anderson.
And Sasse has also used his diagnosis and platform as a former senator to talk to the country about what matters most. In addition to “Interesting Times,” he has appeared on programs like “60 Minutes,” The Hoover Institute’s “Uncommon Knowledge,” and “Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.”
When Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” asked Sasse, “Why are you spending time doing this?” the Nebraskan replied with characteristic dry wit: “You invited me, so I assume you needed to fill some time.”
From there, Sasse answered hard questions about what is wrong with government, the future of the American workforce, and God’s sovereignty. Small talk has never been fun for Sasse, and less so when he has so little time.
“He’s not a chit-chat kind of guy,” said Kyle McClellan, who pastored Grace Church, PCA, in Fremont, Nebraska, and grew up with Sasse in Fremont.
McClellan and Sasse have been friends since high school (Sasse claims that as a high school senior, McClellan stuffed sophomore and sophomoric Sasse in a locker). The two families homeschooled their children together, and when Sasse was running for and serving in the U.S. Senate, he attended Grace Church.
McClellan said that part of what made Sasse an effective Senate candidate is that he comes across as a “Nebraska everyman.” He’s warm, self-deprecating, and can explain complex topics in ways that make them suddenly accessible.
“What people are realizing now is that [Nebraska] has certainly shaped him, but he is not everyman. He is in every way a very extraordinary human being,” he said.
McClellan said Sasse has a photographic memory, is well-read and conversant on a variety of topics, and “has probably forgotten more about church history than most of us will ever know.”
Sasse, who earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his doctorate from Yale, spent some time in leadership at Westminster Seminary California. He served as the school’s executive vice president and was on the board of trustees. He resigned from the board in 2014 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He also served as executive director of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, director of White Horse Inn, and executive editor of “Modern Reformation” magazine.
He also counts theologian Michael Horton among his close friends. Sasse appeared on Horton’s podcast “Know What You Believe,” and talked about being mentored by Horton.
“I asked for … a little bit of structure and how the flow of Scripture works, and Mike’s like, ‘Yeah, how about three nights a week? We’ll get together for maybe five hours, and how about when you get there, you’ll have done 2,000 pages of Calvin reading, a couple books of the Bible, three catechisms — one of them can be in English — and then we’ll get together for a few hours.’ And so we started doing that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night over pizza and really cheap beer.”
Eric Landry pastors Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and he and Sasse have been friends since 2000 when Landry joined the staff of “Modern Reformation” and Sasse was its executive editor. He said Sasse has always had a strong sense of vocation and believes he still has work to do, difficult as it is.
“Ben has described it as a vocation to die,” he said. “I think Ben also realizes that there will soon come a time when he no longer has the energy to continue his public presence, so he’s redeeming the time while he can.”
A Lifetime of Church Service
Sasse was president of Midland University in Fremont in 2010 when Grace Church Fremont first began gathering for worship. Sasse provided the church a space to meet on campus. As the president of a Lutheran college, Sasse was required to attend a Lutheran church, but when he resigned from Midland, his family began attending Grace Church.
Just as they would later do at Faith in Gainesville, the Sasses jumped into church life in Fremont. The bowl in the church’s baptismal font rested unevenly in the font, so when the church was baptizing a baby, someone needed to hold the bowl. Sasse always volunteered for the job.
“Ben was the bowl guy,” McClellan said.
When a couple in the church had a grandson die in a car accident, the Sasses not only brought a freezer meal for the grieving family, but also noticed that the houseplants needed watering and watered them.
Sasse attended Grace and served in the U.S. Senate from 2014 until 2023 when he resigned from the Senate to become president at the University of Florida.
In July 2024, Sasse resigned from his post at the University of Florida, citing his wife Melissa’s health concerns as the primary reason for stepping down. He hoped to focus more on his wife’s health. The family moved to Austin in 2025, where they attend Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Landry said because the Sasse family lived in Austin previously, they have an extensive support network to help them now, and many in that support network attend Redeemer.
Sasse receives his treatment several days each week in Houston. The medicine depletes his energy, so he sleeps as much as 15 hours each day. Still, while he has breath, he will do the work before him, reminding the country of the value of community and the church of the goodness of God.
The truth is, “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). The way Sasse has stewarded this physical trial reminds Christians that we have all been entrusted with a brief window in which to live. Though our death may not be as public as his, our faith certainly can be.
Landry observed that there is no difference between the “public” Sasse and the private “Sasse,” and no major difference between how Sasse prioritized his life before he knew he was dying and after.
“Although he has had to give greater attention to his own medical care and the prospect of dying has focused his energies, he is still the same man I’ve known and admired for many years,” he said.
“What people are seeing is who Ben has always been,” McClellan said. “What we are hearing is the spiritual and intellectual equivalent of good barbecue. Low and slow, and in the end you get the benefits of a thoughtful process. This guy has been thoughtful, intentional, careful. He’s really bright, but there are lots of really bright people and really bright Christians who cannot articulate things as clearly and concisely as Ben does. It’s who he has always been.”