Barth: God elected our rejection

For if God Himself became man, this man [Christ], what else can this mean but that He declared Himself guilty of the contradiction against Himself in which man was involved; that He submitted Himself to the law of creation by which such a contradiction could be accompanied only by loss and destruction; that He made Himself the object of the wrath and judgment to which man had brought Himself; that he took upon Himself the rejection which man had deserved; that He tasted Himself the damnation, death and hell which ought to have been the portion of fallen man? ... If we would know what it was that God elected for Himself when He elected fellowship with man, then we can answer only that He elected our rejection. He made it his own. He bore it and suffered it with all its most bitter consequences. [Barth, CD II.2, 164]