Proverbs 22:7 (WEB)
The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender.Proverbs 22:7 · World English Bible, public domain
The Bible's core debt text. Not a prohibition but a description of what borrowing does to you.
Questions · Debt & risk
Is debt a sin?
Updated 2026-07-31 · Sources: 4
The straight answer
Most readers say no. Scripture never names borrowing as a sin outright, though some read one verse (Romans 13:8) as forbidding it; both readings are below. It also never commends it, which is a different thing from approving it, and the distance between those two facts is where most arguments happen.
The core text is a power analysis rather than a moral rule: the borrower is servant to the lender. Debt is described as a relationship that reduces your freedom and mortgages your future work. Around that sit urgent warnings about guaranteeing someone else's loan, a widow whose creditor is coming for her sons, and nobles in Nehemiah taking fields and children as collateral. Meanwhile the law regulates lending in detail: no interest on charity loans to the poor, a cloak taken in pledge back by sundown, debts released in the seventh year; and you do not write rules for the terms of a sin.
What Scripture does call wrong is not repaying. That is stated flatly, and it is the thing most people skip.
So the honest summary, on the majority reading: borrowing is not sin; it is a risk with a moral edge. Keep it rare, small, short, and repaid; never guarantee a debt you could not pay; and treat any loan as a claim on a future you do not control.
The passages
Printed in full from the public-domain World English Bible, resolved from a local copy of that text before this page was built. Read them before you take our summary on trust, and see how we read Scripture on money for the ten rules every page here follows.
Romans 13:8 (WEB)
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.Romans 13:8 · World English Bible, public domain
The pivot verse, read two ways. Note that it closes a paragraph about paying dues.
Psalm 37:21 (WEB)
The wicked borrow, and don’t pay back, but the righteous give generously.Psalm 37:21 · World English Bible, public domain
The line Scripture does draw: borrowing and not repaying is a moral failure.
Exodus 22:25-27 (WEB)
25“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor. You shall not charge him interest. 26If you take your neighbor’s garment as collateral, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down, 27for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What would he sleep in? It will happen, when he cries to me, that I will hear, for I am gracious.Exodus 22:25-27 · World English Bible, public domain
The law regulates lending rather than banning borrowing, and puts a floor under the debtor.
Contested: both cases from the text
Does Romans 13:8 forbid borrowing outright?
One verse, two readings, and a household decision hanging on which is right. The short form of each case; the long one is on the theme page linked below.
Yes, owe nothing means no debt
The command carries no exception clause, and the rest of Scripture leans the same way.
Passages relied on (WEB)
- Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
- Proverbs 22:7 The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender.
- Deuteronomy 28:12 Yahweh will open to you his good treasure in the sky, to give the rain of your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You will lend to many nations, and you will not bor…
- Proverbs 22:26-27 Don’t you be one of those who strike hands, of those who are collateral for debts. If you don’t have means to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?
Strongest point
Nothing in the sentence carves out an exception, and the texts around it lean one way. Borrowing is the thing that puts one household under another. Deuteronomy 28 files lending under the blessings promised to national Israel and borrowing under the curses on that same nation. And the warnings about guaranteeing a loan read like a fire alarm.
Where it is weakest
Applied without limit it forbids the electricity account, which is an obligation carried from month to month, and the paragraph this sentence closes is about dues that keep recurring. Deuteronomy 28 will not carry the weight either: a national list of blessings and curses is not a household scorecard, and it does not certify the debt-free family as the blessed one.
No, it forbids unpaid debt
The sin named is default and delay, not the existence of a loan.
Passages relied on (WEB)
- Romans 13:6-8 For this reason you also pay taxes, for they are servants of God’s service, attending continually on this very thing. Therefore give everyone what you owe: if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if cu…
- Psalm 37:21 The wicked borrow, and don’t pay back, but the righteous give generously.
- Exodus 22:25 “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor. You shall not charge him interest.
- Deuteronomy 15:7-11 If a poor man, one of your brothers, is with you within any of your gates in your land which Yahweh your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor bro…
Strongest point
Paul has just finished telling readers to pay what is owed to everyone owed it; the next line turns that into the one account never closed, which is love. In Psalm 37 the wickedness lands on the failing to pay back, not on the borrowing. And a law commanding loans to a poor brother assumes borrowers who are doing nothing wrong.
Where it is weakest
It converts easily into a permission slip. Debt is never presented as a good, only as a fact the law fences in, and a rule aimed only at lateness clears a thirty-year mortgage and a carried card balance on identical terms.
Weighed by the Book
CommandedWhat Scripture commands
- Render to each what is due, and repay what you owe (Romans 13:7): the one point both readings of the next verse agree on.
- Do not oppress a poor debtor or strip him of what he needs to live (Exodus 22:25-27).
WisdomWise application, not command
- Keep debt rare, short, and small; the borrower serves the lender (Proverbs 22:7).
- Never guarantee a debt you could not pay yourself (Proverbs 22:26-27).
- Do not presume on tomorrow when you sign for it (James 4:13-15).
FreedomWhere faithful people differ
- Whether to take a mortgage, a student loan, or a business line. Faithful people differ.
Go deeper
- Theme: Debt, borrowing, and surety
The whole picture, including Israel's credit law.
- Lesson: How credit works
The mechanics under the moral question.
- Tool: Debt spiral
What minimum payments do over time.
- Question: Are credit cards wrong?
The same question at household scale.
- Money: Interest and usury
Two thousand years of argument about what a lender may charge.