The Reformed world doesn’t need another shouting match about Theonomy or Christian Nationalism. It needs a sober, pastoral treatment of what God’s law actually does in the believer’s life.
Stephen Spinnenweber’s Loving the Law: The Law of God in the Life of the Believer (Christian Focus, 2025) is exactly that. He keeps the focus where the Reformed Confessions keep it: God’s law as a joyful guide for Christian living, never a ladder for justification.
Anyone who follows the Larger for Life podcast already knows Spinnenweber can teach. This book confirms he can write.
Pastor First, Theologian Throughout
Spinnenweber serves as senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Jacksonville, Florida, and his Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary training shows on every page.
The book is short, but it isn’t light. It assumes a reader who genuinely wants to understand the law’s role in a believer’s life, not someone looking for permission to dismiss it as a leftover or weaponize it as a club.
Cutting Through the Confusion
Spend ten minutes on X and you’ll see the two ditches Spinnenweber is trying to keep his readers out of. On one side sits the antinomian, who treats the law as something Christ tossed away on his way out of the tomb. On the other sits the neonomian, who quietly turns the law into a ladder for earning God’s favor.
Spinnenweber refuses both. Drawing from the Westminster Standards, he presents the law as a gift, framed by the classic threefold use: the law shows us our sin, restrains evil in the world, and guides the believer in holy living.
“because Christ satisfied the demands of the Ceremonial Law on behalf of His people, Scripture teaches that believers are no longer required to keep the Ceremonial Law” (pp. 11-12).
However, the “Moral Law is the absolute, perfect standard of righteous…This law is forever fixed and binding upon all men….God intended His people to keep the Moral Law forever” (pp. 22-23).
That distinction between the Ceremonial and the Moral does a lot of quiet work in the rest of the book.
In Chapter 3, “The Law as Mirror,” Spinnenweber takes up the first use. “This is the first use of the Moral Law—it reveals who we really are and how desperately we need a Savior” (p. 56). He builds on Calvin quoting Augustine:
“The utility of the law is, that it convinces man of his weakness, and compels him to apply for the medicine of grace” (p. 68).
Spinnenweber adds, “The law drives us outside of ourselves to the only one who can heal us, to Jesus Christ the Great Physician of our souls” (p. 69). That isn’t merely first-use theology; that’s first-use pastoring.
Where the Ten Commandments Land in Real Life
Spinnenweber’s treatment of the Ten Commandments is where the book earns its title. He doesn’t drift into general principles. He keeps grounding each commandment in concrete, recognizable life.
“On the Last Day when Christ comes and all are raised to stand before the great white throne of judgement, He will not be grading on a curve…We will stand either upon our own merits or Christ’s merits.” (pp. 62-63)
In Chapter 4, “The Law as Muzzle,” Spinnenweber turns to the second use, the law’s restraining role in civic life. He argues that “individual Christians as members of the spiritual and civil kingdoms have the responsibility to live obediently to Christ in both spheres” (p. 95). The line that hit me hardest came on the next page:
“Politics has the potential to take our eyes off of the kingdom of God and to fixate them upon the kingdoms of man.”
It’s a sentence worth reading twice. Demanding sanctification from politicians is always cheaper than the work of pursuing it ourselves.
Spinnenweber doesn’t leave the church passive in civic matters either. As occasion warrants, the church is to “‘remind earthy governors that they will answer to the King of kings’ for how they ruled” (p. 96).
Connecting Law and Gospel with Grace
Spinnenweber draws the line between law and gospel without dividing them.
“Any attempt to use the moral Law for justification represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose for which God revealed it” (p. 72).
He continues: “When He revealed the Moral Law at Mt. Sinai, God was not establishing a new Covenant of Works. Had He been, it would have nullified the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 15…[the Law] has always been subservient to the purposes of the Gospel.” (pp. 72-73).
Believers in union with Christ can therefore say with the Psalmist, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97).
If I had a wishlist for a longer second edition, I’d ask for a fuller treatment of Republication, the view that the Mosaic Covenant republishes the Covenant of Works in a typological sense. Confessional Presbyterians don’t agree on the question, and Spinnenweber’s pastoral instincts would be welcome on it.
He does take up Romans 2:13, a verse some evangelicals press into service for the idea that good works contribute to final justification. That reading collapses the forensic character of justification, which is received by imputation of Christ’s righteousness alone.
Spinnenweber’s correction comes by way of Calvin: “Paul’s point is that if one wants to be justified by the Moral Law, the mere hearing of it will do them no good” (p. 62). No one, Jew or Gentile, has obeyed perfectly. Paul drives the reader to faith in Christ, who fulfilled the law and gives his righteousness as gift.
The same point grounds his reading of Romans 2:6: “On the Last Day when Christ comes and all are raised to stand before the great white throne of judgment, He will not be grading on a curve” (p. 63). The standard is perfect obedience. “None of us have kept God’s law perfectly” (p. 63).
We stand or fall on Christ’s merits, never our own.
The Law as Map: Holy Living
Chapter 5 takes up the third use. “The law, in its third use, acts as a map to guide believers in the way of holiness” (p. 98), and Spinnenweber doesn’t hedge: “Believers are not merely encouraged but required to live in obedience to God’s law” (p. 99).
For those who suspect any law-talk drifts toward legalism, his answer is precise: “Obeying the Moral Law is only contrary to the gospel if the goal is to accomplish through our obedience what only Christ could accomplish” (p. 101).
On sanctification itself, he names the recent Reformed turbulence: “The Reformed and Presbyterian world has had to grapple over the doctrine of progressive sanctification” (p. 101). Some have reduced sanctification to a constant return trip to justification. The catechism stands firm against that move; sanctification involves dying to sin and living unto righteousness (WSC Q. 35).
The law is no enemy of the believer. Spinnenweber treats it as the friend Paul knew it to be.
Why You Should Buy This Book
Loving the Law gives Reformed laity, and the pastors leading them, a clean confessional account of how the law functions for the redeemed. I finished it in two sittings.
“The Ten Commandments are nothing less than ten profound blessings from the finger of God” (p. 117).
The book moves through the three uses (Mirror, Muzzle, Map) and closes with helpful appendices on Images of Christ and Sabbath Laws. Study questions at the end of each chapter make it a strong fit for adult Sunday School or a small group.
It’s the best lay-level treatment of the moral law I’ve read in the last decade.
- Personal reflection: for Reformed Christians (including older teenagers) seeking the law’s role in faith.
- Study groups: questions spark discussions on sanctification (WSC Q. 35).
- Sermon preparation: quotable lines (e.g., Calvin on grace, p. 68).
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Recommended for: Reformed Christians seeking a practical, orthodox account of the moral law in the Christian life.
Where to Buy:
Christian Focus or
Amazon.
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