What Does the Bible Say About Debt?
Ancient wisdom for the modern borrower
Welcome to the first Sunday edition of Money Matters with Toyosi.
This edition is going to be a little different. Wednesdays, we keep it practical: budgeting, investing, building wealth step by step. But Sundays are where we go deeper. This is where we bring in the faith lens. Where we ask not just how to handle money, but why it matters, and what ancient wisdom has to say about it. Think of it as the foundation beneath everything else we build together.
A Quick Confession
I’ll be upfront with you: when it comes to assembling things, I’d rather work it out myself than follow a step-by-step guide. If I can figure it out, I will. But there are some things you simply cannot wing.
A few weeks ago, that thing was my daughter’s trampoline. A 12-by-12-foot beast. I laid out all the parts on the lawn, looked at the sheer scale of it, and knew immediately: this is not a wing-it moment. The stakes were too high. Get it wrong and someone gets hurt. So I put my preference aside, picked up the manual, and followed it. Every step. And it was worth it.
Life, I’ve come to believe, is one of those things you cannot wing.
Which brings me to the best-selling book of all time: the Bible. The Bible was never intended to be read purely as a religious text. It is, at its core, an instruction manual for life, written by the manufacturer of life. It contains principles, promises, predictions, and precepts. It speaks of God and faith, but it is fundamentally a guide for how to win at life. Every personal finance book, every personal development book I have ever read can trace its roots back to biblical principles. That is not an exaggeration.
Here’s what makes that remarkable: you don’t actually need to know God personally to benefit from His principles. As Myron Golden puts it, “principles are God’s automation.” The Bible itself says that God is no respecter of persons, meaning if you apply the principle, you will get the result. That’s why people across centuries and cultures have drawn timeless lessons from Scripture, whether or not they’ve ever had a relationship with God.
My deepest desire is for every reader to know their Maker personally. But if that’s not where you are right now, my hope is that this series still equips you with an ancient, proven guide for navigating life, including one of life’s most pressing and misunderstood topics: debt.
So, Is Debt a Sin?
Some people will tell you debt is evil, full stop. And they'll often point to Proverbs 22:7 to make the case:
“Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender.”
And it’s a powerful verse. But I want to be careful here, because I think this interpretation, while well-intentioned, misses something important.
Before we go further, let’s define our terms. Technically, debt is a sum of money borrowed by one party from another, creating a legal obligation to repay, usually with interest, over an agreed period. I would define debt as borrowing from your future to pay for your present. You are making a promise that what you cannot fully afford today, you will repay with tomorrow’s resources.
People often talk about “good debt” and “bad debt” to separate borrowing that builds from borrowing that drains. It’s a useful idea, but it can be misleading, because even so-called good debt becomes destructive if handled carelessly. The real question isn’t just what you’re borrowing for, but whether you are being a faithful steward of what you’ve taken on.
With that in mind, when Proverbs 22:7 calls the borrower a “servant to the lender,” I don’t believe it is issuing a moral verdict on debt itself. I believe it is emphasising the weight of it.
Let me bring it closer to home. Imagine a friend borrows £500 from you. Three months pass. Not a word. Then you see them online, off on a weekend away, posting dinners and new purchases. The money is clearly there. How would that feel? That sense of disrespect and betrayal is exactly what this proverb is pointing to. When you borrow money, you are entering into an agreement with another person. You owe the lender not just repayment, but your word.
Proverbs 22:26–27 takes it even further:
“Don’t be one of those who enter agreements, who put up security for loans. If you have nothing with which to pay, even your bed will be taken from under you.”
The warning isn’t “never borrow.” The warning is: don’t borrow recklessly, and don’t overcommit beyond your means. In a society where credit is endlessly accessible and can be approved in minutes, it’s easy to forget the gravity of what we’re actually doing when we take on debt.
Debt Is Like Fire
The best analogy I’ve found for debt is fire.
Fire, when uncontrolled, is terrifying. It destroys homes, burns down forests, and takes lives. But fire that is harnessed? It heats your home in winter. It cooks your food. It powered the Industrial Revolution. Controlled fire is one of humanity’s greatest tools.
Debt works the same way.
And here’s the thing about fire: we introduce it in stages. The first thing I ever “cooked” as a child was toast. Then warm cereal. Eventually eggs. Then something more ambitious. You build knowledge and skill over time before you’re trusted with the heat.
Think about students at university who discover their overdraft facility and treat it like free money. It isn’t free. It is borrowed from their future selves, and some are still paying it back years later. They weren’t ready for the heat. And many others have used debt as a powerful lever: to build businesses, acquire assets, and create wealth that simply wouldn’t have been possible without it. The difference, almost always, comes down to stewardship.
What the Bible Actually Shows Us About Debt
If the biblical position was simply “debt is evil, never borrow,” you wouldn’t expect to find a prophet instructing a widow to go and borrow from her neighbours. But that’s exactly what happened.
In 2 Kings 4, the prophet Elisha meets a widow in crisis. Her husband has died, leaving behind debt, and creditors are coming to take her sons as payment. Elisha doesn’t rebuke her for the debt. He asks what she has, a small jar of oil, and then gives her an unusual instruction: go to your neighbours and borrow vessels. Don’t borrow a few; borrow as many as you can find. She obeys, the oil miraculously multiplies to fill every vessel, and she is able to sell enough to pay off the debt and live on the rest.
A prophet, a man of God, not only permitted borrowing but actively encouraged borrowing generously. The borrowing itself wasn’t the problem. The oil was the asset. The borrowed vessels were the vehicle through which God multiplied her provision.
Then there’s another story, in 2 Kings 6, that I think is one of the most underappreciated financial parables in the Bible. A group of men are cutting down trees to build a meeting place, and one man’s axe head flies off the handle and sinks into the river. He cries out in distress, not just because he had lost the tool, but because it was also borrowed. The prophet Elisha miraculously causes the iron to float so the man can retrieve it.
The axe was being used for a purpose, to build something of value. But the miracle didn’t erase the man’s responsibility. He still needed to return what he borrowed. And that weighed on him enough to seek help immediately. Whether you borrow to invest in a business, purchase a home, fund your education, cover an urgent need, or even to consume something; the purpose matters, but it never erases the obligation. You are responsible for what you owe.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
The Bible is not anti-debt. But it is consistent in its message: borrowing carries real weight, and that weight demands respect. At its core, this is a stewardship issue. How we handle borrowed money is a direct reflection of how we handle what has been entrusted to us, and that matters far beyond our bank balance.
1. Honour your word. When you borrow, you make a promise. Proverbs 22:1 says “A good name is more desirable than great riches.” Your credit score is a modern version of that good name. It reflects how faithfully you’ve met your commitments. Guard it.
2. Plan before you borrow. Know how and when you intend to repay before you sign anything.
3. Know what you’re handling. Like fire, debt can warm your house or burn it down.
4. Stay accountable. The man with the borrowed axe didn’t shrug when it sank. He sought help immediately. That response isn’t weakness; it’s character.
Debt, like fire, is a tool. The question is never really about the tool. It’s about the person holding it.
One More Verse
Romans 13:8 puts it beautifully: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” Pay what you owe, and never stop loving people.
Next Sunday, we look at Elisha and the widow. One question changes everything: “What do you have in your house?”
This is the first Sunday edition — I’d love to hear your thoughts.
