What Does the Bible Say About Debt?
The borrower is servant to the lender — Scripture's sober realism about owing, lending, and getting free.
The Bible treats debt as bondage to be minimised: “the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). It commands repaying what is owed — “the wicked borroweth, and payeth not again” (Psalm 37:21) — commends the freedom of owing “no man any thing, but to love one another” (Romans 13:8), and calls for mercy from lenders toward the struggling.
Debt's honest name
Proverbs states the power dynamic without cushion: the borrower is servant — literally slave — to the lender. Debt mortgages tomorrow’s freedom to fund today, and Scripture’s counsel runs consistently toward caution: don’t be among those who strike hands in surety without means to pay. This is not a moral condemnation of every loan; it is clear-eyed realism about what owing does to the one who owes.
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?
Pay what you owe
The Psalms make repayment a mark of righteousness: the wicked borrows and repays not, but the righteous sheweth mercy and giveth. Paul’s “owe no man any thing” sits in a passage about rendering everyone their due — taxes, custom, honour — with one debt deliberately left open: love, the obligation that is never paid off. Integrity with money, in Scripture, is integrity, full stop.
The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Mercy on both sides of the ledger
The Bible legislates compassion into lending: Israel’s law forbade interest on loans to the poor, commanded periodic release of debts, and returned a debtor’s pledged cloak by nightfall. Jesus’ great forgiveness parable is denominated in debt — ten thousand talents cancelled — making every lender’s mercy an echo of God’s. For those crushed by owing, Scripture’s God is on the side of release.
If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
Quick answers
- Is it a sin to borrow money?
- No — Scripture regulates lending rather than forbidding borrowing, and Jesus assumes lending in his teaching (Matthew 5:42). The sins Scripture names are borrowing without repaying (Psalm 37:21) and reckless surety (Proverbs 22:26).
- How does the Bible say to get out of debt?
- Its principles: stop adding (Proverbs 21:20), work diligently (Proverbs 13:11), repay faithfully even when slow (Psalm 15:4), and seek counsel (Proverbs 15:22). Proverbs 6:1–5 urges the entangled to free themselves with a gazelle’s urgency.
- What about co-signing loans?
- Proverbs repeatedly warns against surety — guaranteeing another’s debt (Proverbs 11:15; 17:18; 22:26–27) — because you pledge what you may not have. Generosity, it suggests, gives outright rather than guarantees.
