diff --git a/provider.go b/provider.go
index 4da7873c1..ec3b8749a 100644
--- a/provider.go
+++ b/provider.go
@@ -360,10 +360,18 @@ func (p *Provider) up(
 		}
 		apply = p.migrations
 	} else {
-		// optimize(mf): Listing all migrations from the database isn't great. This is only required
-		// to support the allow missing (out-of-order) feature. For users that don't use this
-		// feature, we could just query the database for the current max version and then apply
-		// migrations greater than that version.
+		// optimize(mf): Listing all migrations from the database isn't great.
+		//
+		// The ideal implementation would be to query for the current max version and then apply
+		// migrations greater than that version. However, a nice property of the current
+		// implementation is that we can make stronger guarantees about unapplied migrations.
+		//
+		// In cases where users do not use out-of-order migrations, we want to surface an error if
+		// there are older unapplied migrations. See https://github.com/pressly/goose/issues/761 for
+		// more details.
+		//
+		// And in cases where users do use out-of-order migrations, we need to build a list of older
+		// migrations that need to be applied, so we need to query for all migrations anyways.
 		dbMigrations, err := p.store.ListMigrations(ctx, conn)
 		if err != nil {
 			return nil, err