What the Bible Says About Debt, and How to Get Out

Scripture never calls borrowing a sin. It does describe what debt does to the person carrying it, and the description has aged uncomfortably well.

Below: whether debt is a sin, what Proverbs means by slave to the lender, where credit cards fit, how to get out without shame, and what Jubilee has to do with any of it.

What the Bible says about debt

What the Bible says about debt is that it is permitted, regulated, and never recommended.

The law assumes people will borrow and sets limits on how lenders may behave. Do not charge interest to a poor neighbor. Do not keep someone's cloak overnight as collateral, because they sleep in it. Cancel debts every seven years.

Read those together and a pattern shows up. Scripture is far more interested in restraining the lender than in condemning the borrower.

Is it a sin to be in debt?

No. Being in debt is not a sin, and treating it as one does real damage to people already under pressure.

Romans 13 says to owe no one anything except love, which is often quoted as a prohibition. In context Paul is talking about paying what you owe, taxes included, rather than banning borrowing outright.

What scripture does take seriously is failing to repay what you promised. Psalm 37 describes the wicked as the one who borrows and does not pay back. The weight falls on the promise, not the loan.

What does the borrower is slave to the lender mean?

Proverbs 22:7 says the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender, and it is a description of how power works rather than a moral verdict.

Debt transfers decisions. It decides which job you can leave, which city you can live in, how long you stay in a situation you would otherwise walk out of. The lender never has to say anything for this to be true.

That is the actual danger, and it is worth naming plainly rather than softening. Debt costs you options before it costs you money.

Should Christians use credit cards?

A credit card is a tool that charges you for being wrong about the future.

Used as a payment method and cleared monthly, it is harmless. Used as a way to buy things you do not yet have the money for, it is one of the most expensive loans most people will ever take, at rates the law in Deuteronomy would not have permitted between neighbors.

A simple test: if you could not pay the balance today, the card is no longer a tool. It is a lender, and the Proverbs sentence applies.

How do you get out of debt without shame?

You start by writing the real number down, which is the step almost everyone skips.

Most people carrying debt do not know the total. They know it is bad. Open every account and write the actual figures in one place, without judging a single line. You are gathering facts, not building a case against yourself.

Then pick one debt and attack it while paying minimums on the rest. Then tell one person, because debt does most of its damage in secret and loses a surprising amount of its power when said out loud.

And keep giving something, even if it is small. Stopping entirely until you are debt free sounds responsible and usually ends with the habit gone.

What does the Bible say about forgiving debt?

Scripture treats debt forgiveness as a normal, scheduled part of a healthy community rather than an extraordinary act of charity.

Every seventh year debts were released. Every fiftieth year, in Jubilee, land went back to the families who had lost it. The point was to stop one bad decade from becoming a permanent class.

Jesus then puts it in the prayer he taught. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The word is financial before it is ever spiritual, and he does not ask us to choose between the two meanings.

Where do I start?

Write the total down tonight, and tell one person tomorrow.

Nothing about the number changes in those two steps. What changes is that it stops being a thing you carry alone in the dark, which is the condition debt relies on.

At UAMEZ Church in Palo Alto we are in a six-week series called Money Moves, and this is a room where you can say the number out loud. We meet at 3549 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto, CA.