How great was your  love for us, O great Father, for you did not spare your own Son but gave him up to save us sinners! Jesus-God who alone was free among the dead (free to lay down his life and free to take it up again) became for us both victor and victim. He freed us from slavery and made us  your children. We might have despaired of ourselves if he had not come to dwell among us.

—Augustine, Confessions, 10.43.69