When we come to this Table, we do so as forgiven sinners. Grace has dealt with the past, and has done so in such a way as that the past no longer matters. Under the blood of Christ, God doesn’t care what you have done. As grace has washed away every stain, it follows that every stain has been washed away. The gospel invitation has gone out to all men, and every kind of sinner has responded to it. This includes adulterers, murderers, thieves, drunks, liars, pornographers, prostitutes, embezzlers, con artists, fornicators, skeptics, and every other kind of sinner that there might be. This grace means we come to this Table just as though not one of those sins had been committed.
What is to keep a sinner from abusing this system of grace? Why not sin, as Paul puts it, that grace may abound? Here’s why this works. God never takes up our past by His grace without simultaneously taking up our future. When God picks up a human life, He picks it up by both ends. This is what He always does, and in every instance.
If He does not pick up the future, predestining us to holiness, then this means that He has not picked up the past. If He picks up the past, forgiving every last sin we have ever done, this means that He is engaged to do exactly the same thing with our future. God is not a system that can be worked. God is not gullible.
As we come to this Table, we are testifying to our confidence that God has engaged to be a God to us. And this means that ten years from now, twenty years, and fifty, He will still be our Savior. He will still be the one who cleanses us from all unrighteousness. His work is ongoing. His forgiveness is eternal. He never performs the work of salvation piecemeal. When it comes to the restoration of a fallen human life, God is a systematician—He methodically begins at one end, and leads us through to glory at the other. So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.