It came at a cost

What we dare not lose in the “ransom saying” is the sense conveyed to us that Jesus himself is the price of our redemption. The church needs to hear the apostolic truth that the death of Jesus was an offering of incomparable value. That is the basic idea in ransom and redemption: not just any deliverance, but deliverance at cost. We may retain the more general sense and the more literal one at the same time, as long as we keep them in balance. Redemption can mean “loosing” or “freeing” in a very broad sense; but if we are to account for the very particular horrors of crucifixion, we must retain the idea of cost.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 289 (emphasis original)