What did Jesus say about debt?

At a Glance

What I said: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matthew 6:12). Lend, expecting nothing back (Luke 6:35). I announced the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:19), the year when debts were released.

What the rest of the Bible says: The law of Moses banned interest on loans to the poor (Exodus 22:25), cancelled debts every seventh year (Deuteronomy 15:1–2), and returned lost land every fiftieth (Leviticus 25:10).

When today’s view appeared: For more than a thousand years the church forbade Christians to lend at interest. That began to change in the 1500s. The idea that every debt must be paid in full, whatever it costs the debtor, is not in your Bible.

The short answer: Debt was one of the main things I came to set people free from. I used it as the picture of what God does with sin.

Many of the people who followed me were in debt.

In Galilee, a bad harvest meant borrowing. Borrowing meant putting up your field. A second bad harvest meant losing the field and working someone else’s land, or being sold, with your family, to pay what you owed. My stories are full of debtors, because many of my hearers were.

In one of them, a servant owed his king a sum so large it could never be paid. Because he couldn’t pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had (Matthew 18:25). That was not a fairy tale. That was how debt worked.

What I said

When I taught my friends to pray, I put debt at the center. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matthew 6:12).

The word I used, in Aramaic, meant both a debt of money and a wrong done. Matthew keeps the money word in Greek. You can read it as only about sin, and many do. But my hearers owed real money to real people, and I taught them to pray every day for both kinds of release, and to give it to others.

When I stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth, I read from Isaiah: to proclaim release to the captives … to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18–19). Many in that room would have heard in the year of the Lord the year of release, when debts were cancelled and land went home.¹

I told my friends: If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive back as much. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back (Luke 6:34–35).

When I wanted to explain God’s forgiveness, I reached for debt. A certain lender had two debtors. The one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they couldn’t pay, he forgave them both (Luke 7:41–42). And in the story of the servant who owed the king, the king being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt (Matthew 18:27). The servant was condemned only when he refused to do the same for a fellow servant who owed him a little.

I also warned against the religious men who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers (Mark 12:40). A widow could lose her house to debt, or to the men who managed her affairs.

What the rest of your Bible says

My people’s law was built to keep debt from swallowing families.

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 (Exodus 22:25).

At the end of every seven years, you shall cancel debts … every creditor shall release that which he has lent to his neighbor (Deuteronomy 15:1–2).

You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family (Leviticus 25:10).

The prophets counted lending at interest among the marks of a wicked man (Ezekiel 18:8). And when Nehemiah came home to Jerusalem, he found families saying, we bring our sons and our daughters into bondage to be servants … because other men have our fields and our vineyards (Nehemiah 5:5). He made the lenders give it all back.

Whether the year of jubilee was ever fully kept is uncertain.² By my time, teachers had found a way around the seventh-year release, so that lenders would keep lending.³ But the law was there, and the prophets would not let anyone forget it.

What my followers did with it

For more than a thousand years, the church took the ban on interest seriously.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 forbade clergy to lend at interest. Later councils extended the ban to everyone. The Third Lateran Council in 1179 denied Christian burial to open moneylenders, and the Council of Vienne in 1311 declared that anyone who insisted that lending at interest was not a sin should be treated as a heretic.⁴

The ban had an ugly side. Because Christians were forbidden to lend at interest, Jews were often pushed into moneylending, and then hated and expelled for it.⁵

In the 1500s, John Calvin argued that moderate interest on business loans was not the same as the crushing interest the Bible condemned. Within a century, most Protestant lands allowed moderate interest. The Catholic Church came to accept it more slowly.⁶

What is new

What is new is debt on the scale you live with.

In the middle of 2026, American households owed about 18.8 trillion dollars, including about 1.26 trillion on credit cards and 1.65 trillion in student loans.⁷ Payday loans and similar short-term loans can carry yearly interest rates of several hundred percent, and are often made to people who have few other ways to borrow.⁸

My people’s law forbade charging the poor any interest at all. Your lenders often charge the poor the most.

What You’ll Hear Back

“The wicked borrow and don’t pay back. Paying your debts is a Christian duty.”

It is: The wicked borrow, and don’t pay back (Psalm 37:21). If you can pay what you owe, pay it. I did not teach anyone to cheat a lender. But that verse is about the borrower’s honesty. The commands about release and interest are about the lender’s mercy. Your Bible has both, and most of its words on debt are aimed at lenders.

“Forgive us our debts is about sin, not money.”

Many readers take it that way, and Luke’s version says Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us (Luke 11:4). I used the word that covered both. You do not have to choose. A God who forgives your sins and asks you to forgive the people who owe you is not asking you to keep a strict ledger on your neighbor.

“Cancelling debt rewards irresponsibility.”

Some debt comes from foolish choices. Much of it comes from illness, a lost job, or a loan that was designed to be hard to escape. The law of Moses did not ask why a family was in debt before it released them in the seventh year. It assumed that debt would pile up over time, and built in a way out.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Matthew 18:21–35.

You will find: a servant forgiven a debt he could never pay, and what happened when he would not forgive a small one.

Then read Deuteronomy 15:1–11 and Luke 4:16–21, and ask what the acceptable year of the Lord meant to the people in that synagogue.

The Short Version

• I taught my friends to pray forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
• I announced the year of the Lord, the year when debts were released.
• I told my followers to lend, expecting nothing back.
• The law of Moses banned interest to the poor, cancelled debts every seventh year, and returned land in the jubilee.
• The church forbade lending at interest for more than a thousand years. Debt on today’s scale is new.