Barth on the individual, part I: predestined humanity is forgiven humanity

[The] concept of the “individual,” if it is to be a fitting characterisation of the predestinate, must be understood in an entirely new dimension. It must be carried beyond its immediate, positive meaning to a negative meaning, in which it is genuinely perceived that predestined man is simply forgiven man. Predestined man (according to the election of Jesus Christ and the community) is he who, in and with God’s choice, is not met with honour and approval, but by justification by grace alone, by forgiveness; who is not the object of divine election in virtue of a life which is acceptable and welcome to God, but because God covers, transforms and renews his unworthy and rebellious life; whom the sovereign God (in the sovereignty of His omnipotence and loving-kindness, His constancy and patience) encounters, not with a natural Therefore, but with a miraculous Nevertheless; whom he chooses absolutely for the sake of His own will; whom He makes a partner of His covenant quite apart from and even contrary to his own merit or ability.

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 315.