A CEO I worked with years ago had one rule for expenses. Everyone got a corporate card. Everyone submitted receipts. Everyone followed the same policy. He treated the top performer and the new hire identically. The result was not fairness. The result was that the honest people felt distrusted and the creative people found workarounds. The policy that was supposed to protect the organization ended up punishing the people who needed the least oversight.

Paul says something that sounds reckless if you read it too quickly. “We know that the law is good when used correctly. For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders. The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God.”

That is 1 Timothy 1:8-11, and it is one of the most misunderstood passages in Paul’s letters. The misunderstanding is not about the sins he lists. It is about the function of the law itself.

Paul is writing to Timothy, who is in Ephesus trying to lead a church that has been overrun by false teachers. These teachers have become obsessed with the law: speculative interpretations, endless genealogies, arguments about Moses that produce controversy instead of clarity. Paul calls it “meaningless discussions.” The people who most want to talk about the law are the people least interested in what the law was actually for.

Paul’s correction is sharp and simple. The law is good. That is not the debate. The debate is whether the law is for everyone in the same way. Paul says no. The law is for the lawless. It is a restraint on evil, not a curriculum for the righteous. When you apply the law indiscriminately, when you treat every person in your organization as if they need the same level of oversight, you are using a good tool for the wrong purpose.

This is a leadership principle hiding in a passage about theology. Most leaders build systems for the worst-case scenario. The expense policy is written for the person who will abuse it. The approval chain is built for the employee who cannot be trusted. The performance management process is designed for the person who will not perform. The result is an organization where everyone lives under rules written for the least trustworthy person in the room.

Paul’s argument is that the law has a specific target audience. It is aimed at the person who kills their father, the slave trader, the liar, the promise breaker. It is not aimed at the person whose heart is already aligned with the teaching. When you apply the law to the righteous person, you are not protecting anything. You are insulting the transformation the Gospel has already produced.

The CEO with the one-size-fits-all expense policy was not wrong to have a policy. He was wrong to think the policy was doing the same thing for everyone. The honest employee did not need the policy at all. At best, it was a bureaucratic hurdle that communicated distrust. The dishonest employee was barely slowed down. The person who wants to steal will find a way regardless of the receipt requirement. Meanwhile, the person who was never going to steal is now doing extra paperwork and wondering why their integrity is not enough.

Paul does not say “throw out the law.” He says use it correctly. The law is good. He affirms this in Romans 7:12, where he writes that “the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.” The problem is never the law. The problem is applying it to people who do not need it.

This has practical implications for anyone who leads people. The question is not whether you have rules. The question is whether your rules differentiate between the people who need guardrails and the people who need freedom. The best leaders I have known do not manage everyone the same way. They give more autonomy to the proven, more structure to the developing, and more accountability to the struggling. That is not favoritism. It is stewardship. You are entrusted with people at different stages of growth, and treating them all identically is not fairness. It is laziness.

Think about how Jesus led. He had twelve disciples, and he did not manage them with identical expectations. He gave Peter more direct correction than John. He let Thomas ask the questions everyone else was thinking. He invested differently in James and John than he did in Andrew and Philip. He knew their hearts, and he led them accordingly. The law, the set of expectations and boundaries, served different functions for different people. The Pharisees were using external compliance to mask internal corruption, and for them the law was a mirror exposing what they refused to see. The woman caught in adultery received something different: the law was set aside in favor of grace and a simple instruction. Go and sin no more.

Paul’s insight in 1 Timothy 1 is that the law functions like a diagnostic tool, not a universal operating system. It diagnoses what is broken. When nothing is broken, when a person’s heart is aligned with the Gospel, the law’s diagnostic function is unnecessary. That does not mean the righteous person lives without standards. It means the standards have been internalized. The righteous person does not need a rule against lying because they have become the kind of person who tells the truth. The righteous person does not need a policy against stealing because they have become the kind of person who is generous. The law is for the person who still needs the external restraint because the internal transformation has not yet taken root.

This is difficult to apply in a secular workplace where you cannot assume shared faith. You cannot walk into a Monday morning staff meeting and say “some of you are righteous and some of you are lawless, and I am going to manage you accordingly.” Still, you can build an organization that trusts people until they prove themselves untrustworthy, instead of distrusting everyone until they earn your confidence. The default posture of your policies should be trust, not suspicion. The burden of proof should be on the restriction, not on the freedom.

There is a risk here that Paul anticipates. If the law is not for the righteous, does that mean the righteous person can do whatever they want? Paul’s answer is in verse 5, the verse we looked at yesterday: the purpose of instruction is love from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith. The righteous person is not freed from the law to do whatever they want. They are freed from the law because they have been transformed into someone who already wants what the law commands. The law has done its work. It has pointed them to Christ. They do not need it as a restraint because they have something better: a heart that loves what God loves.

That is the counterintuitive leadership principle at the center of this passage. The goal of leadership is not to build better rules. It is to build better people. A rule can restrain behavior. Only transformation changes desire. The leader who spends their energy on policies and enforcement is doing the law’s work: important, necessary in certain cases, but never the final goal. The leader who spends their energy on developing people is doing what Paul describes in verse 11. They are aligning the community with “the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News.”

When you encounter a problem in your organization, your instinct will tell you to write a new policy. That is the law impulse. Before you do, ask whether the problem is a character issue or a policy gap. If it is a policy gap, close it. If it is a character issue, no policy will fix it. The person who is determined to cut corners will find the gap in any policy you write. The person whose heart has been formed by integrity will do the right thing even where no policy exists.

This month we are walking through Paul’s final letters to Timothy, the closest thing the Bible has to a leadership mentorship manual. Next month, when The Leadership Mentorship Field Manual releases, the principle Paul teaches here will show up in the section on building teams: character first, policies second. The law is good. Character is better. The leader who can tell the difference will waste less energy on rules that were never going to change anyone’s heart.

Leadership Challenge: Think about the last policy or rule you created in your organization. Who was it actually written for: the person who would never violate it, or the person you were worried about? What would change if you led the trustworthy with freedom and addressed the untrustworthy directly?

I write about leadership at the intersection of timeless principles and modern workplaces. Follow for weekly insights on building teams that actually work. For more articles like this consider subscribing to my Substack at: https://christianleadership.now