“Inasmuch as He was a man, He was a mediator, but inasmuch as He is the Word, He is not in the middle, because He is equal to God, and is God in the presence of God, and one God together with Him.
How you loved us, good Father, who did not spare your only Son, but handed Him over for the sake of us, the wicked!
How you loved us, for whose sake Your Son, through not considering it an act of robbery to be Your equal, was subjugated and reduced clear to death on the cross!
But He was the only one among the dead with free will, having both the power to lay down His life and the power to take it up again.
For our sake, He was both Your victor and Your sacrificial victim, and the victor because He was the victim.
For our sake He was both Your sacrificing priest and Your sacrifice, and He was the priest because He was the sacrifice. He was born from You yet acted as our slave, thereby turning us from Your slaves into Your sons.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 341-342.
