When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper (and we do celebrate it), we are not celebrating that God has overlooked our sin but that He most certainly has not. Grace isn’t God’s willful oblivion. Grace is His premeditated forgiveness with a full view. God knows all of our sin. And God receives Jesus’ sacrifice as a full ransom for our sin.

Christ saw the list of charges against us. He knew we disobeyed, and how badly. And He joined us in flesh so that He could take on the punishment we deserved. He “canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).

He became like us “so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). He is the one “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Unlike the first Adam, the second Adam saw what we did and said, “Take me instead.”

This is why the prophet Isaiah anticipated:

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:5–6)

The good news is that the righteous God-Man loved His Bride and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25), for all of us sinners who believe in Him. The gospel is no accident. We are eating at the Groom’s cost not because He doesn’t know what we’ve done, but because of what He’s done about what we’ve done.