To whom did Jesus pay “ransom”?

One of the most widely held views of atonement in the early church was that Christ died as a payment to Satan to purchase back the souls of men that Satan “owns” as a result of the Fall. Satan, and not God, seems to be the logical recipient of a ransom payment. However, there are multiple problems with this view, the greatest being (1) this theory makes Satan equal to or superior to God, (2) this theory fails to account for the justice of God, and (3) the theory allows for deception on the part of God: God offered Satan the life of Christ in exchange for the souls of men, a trade that Satan was eager to make; what Satan did not know was that the death of Christ was temporary, a bit of trickery that Satan did not discover until after the fact. These factors make this theory unacceptable.

The use of ransom terminology should probably not be viewed in terms of God bartering with Satan for soul-ownership. Instead, ransom simply denotes the infinite cost of freeing man from his obligation to die. It wasn’t paid to anyone, per se, but was a sacrifice made to placate God and liberate man (see Isa 53:10; Eph 5:2).