The stronger man is not the one who keeps that fact out of his mind. The wiser man is the one who lets it drive him straight to Christ. Not to borrowed language about faith. To Christ crucified for sinners. A Christ who fulfilled all righteousness. To Christ who took away sin and who will raise His people up.

The diagnosis did not make Ben Sasse a dying man. It made him an honest one.

Most of us spend our days polishing the jar. We tend the calendar, answer the texts and make the plan for next month and next fall and five years from now. We move through bright kitchens and parking lots and church foyers with the quiet assumption that time is ours in workable portions. Then one sentence from a doctor can split the room open and let the truth rush in like cold air.

Sasse has spoken from that place with unusual plainness. He said he was given a three to four month life expectancy and that he is now living on “extended time already.” He has also called his cancer “a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth.”

That is the line that stays with me…forces me to tell the truth.

A man does not need a terminal diagnosis to become mortal. He needs one to stop pretending.

Paul opens the cupboard and brings out the cracked dishes. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). God places His jewel in a clay jar. He puts the glory of Christ in fragile people so nobody mistakes the source of the power.

A clay jar is useful. A clay jar is common. A clay jar breaks.

That is where American Christians often get disoriented. We know the verses. We confess the doctrines. Then we still live as if faithful people ought to feel sturdy all the time.

We think obedience should make life feel steadier. Then pressure comes. Fear comes. The body weakens. The phone rings at dusk. The scan lights up and the biopsy comes back. The doctor pauses too long.

Paul does not sound surprised. “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

God keeps His people alive under pressure. Christians are ordinary people, suffering people, dying people, yet held up by a power that does not come from force of personality.

Sasse is not revealing a new truth. He is revealing an old one most of us keep covered with busyness. The body is a jar of clay. Flesh gives way. Life keeps moving anyway. Then one day a man realizes that every ordinary sound has been happening on the edge of eternity.

He said cancer forces him to tell the truth. One of the truths he has told is better than all the others. “Jesus did everything on the cross to fulfill the whole law. I fulfilled none of it. He fulfilled all of it, and he took away all of my sins.”

Read More