Ask this in most Nigerian churches and you will get an answer delivered with total confidence: no. Debt is bondage. The borrower is servant to the lender. Owe no man anything.
Ask a Christian business owner who needs working capital, or a family whose child has a university place and no fees, and the confident answer becomes considerably harder to apply.
The honest position is that Scripture is more nuanced than the sermon version, and considerably more demanding than the permissive one. It does not ban borrowing. It does treat it as serious, constraining, and something to escape rather than to live inside.
Here is what it actually says, and how to apply it.
The verse everyone quotes, and what it means
Proverbs 22:7 — the rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
This is the text used to declare all borrowing sinful. But look at what kind of statement it is. Proverbs is wisdom literature: it describes how the world generally works, not what is forbidden. The verse is not a prohibition. It is a warning about a power dynamic.
And it is entirely accurate. A person with a loan has less freedom than a person without one. They cannot leave a job as easily. They cannot say no as easily. Their future income is committed before it arrives.
That is a real cost, and it should weigh heavily in the decision. But describing something as costly is not the same as forbidding it.
Romans 13:8 — owe no one anything except to love one another.
The other verse used to close the argument. Read the surrounding passage, though: Paul has just spent several verses instructing believers to pay their taxes, their tolls, their respect, and their honour. The theme is discharging obligations, not avoiding them. The instruction is to keep your accounts settled, not to never enter into one.
What Scripture actually regulates
Here is the striking thing: where the Bible legislates about debt, it almost always constrains the lender, not the borrower.
Interest on the poor was prohibited. Exodus 22 and Leviticus 25 forbid charging interest to a poor fellow Israelite.
Collateral was restricted. A lender could not take a millstone as security, because it was how the family made their food. Nor keep a poor man’s cloak overnight, because he slept in it.
Debts were periodically cancelled. Deuteronomy 15 mandated release every seven years.
Refusing to lend because release was near was condemned. The same passage explicitly warns against the calculation.
The picture is not a prohibition on borrowing. It is a system designed to prevent debt from becoming permanent servitude — and a strong ethical burden placed on those with money.
Worth noting, since it cuts against how the topic is usually preached: Scripture is considerably harder on predatory lending than on borrowing.
The questions that actually decide it
Rather than asking is borrowing allowed, ask these six. They will settle most cases.
1. Is this for an asset or for consumption?
A loan for something that generates income or holds value — equipment, a shop, land, education, a home — is a different proposition from a loan for a wedding, a phone, or a funeral ceremony.
Consumption borrowing is where most families are destroyed, and in Nigerian context the ceremony debt is the great unexamined one. Enormous sums are borrowed for weddings and burials because of what people will say, and the family services that debt for years. Nothing in Scripture requires that, and the social pressure driving it is not a spiritual obligation.
2. Can you service it from current income, not projected income?
The most dangerous loans are the ones repaid from money you expect to have. If the repayment only works assuming the business grows, the contract comes through, or the salary increases, you are borrowing against a hope.
Ask: if my income stayed exactly as it is today, could I repay this? If no, the loan is a gamble.
3. What is the actual rate, calculated properly?
Nigerian lending advertises monthly rates because they sound small. A quoted 5% monthly is roughly 80% annually once compounding is accounted for. Loan apps commonly run far higher when fees are included.
Calculate the annual figure before signing anything. Many people discover at that point that the answer is obvious.
4. What happens if you cannot pay?
Read the recovery terms. In the Nigerian loan app market specifically, defaulting has meant harassment of contacts, public shaming messages sent to a borrower’s phone book, and threats. Some of this is illegal, which does not prevent it happening.
If the downside includes your family being humiliated, factor that in before you borrow, not after.
5. Have you agreed it with your spouse?
A loan taken secretly is a betrayal regardless of the amount. It commits shared future income without shared consent, and the discovery does more damage to the marriage than the money does to the finances.
6. Have you exhausted the alternatives?
Selling something. Waiting six months. A smaller version of the plan. Asking family — with clear terms written down, because informal family lending destroys more relationships than banks do.
When borrowing is defensible
Business or productive assets, where the return reasonably exceeds the cost and you have tested the assumption rather than hoped it.
Education, where it genuinely improves earning capacity — though be honest about whether the specific course does, rather than assuming any degree will.
Housing, where a mortgage payment replaces rent and builds equity, and where the terms are survivable.
Genuine medical emergency, where the alternative is a preventable death. This one requires no further justification.
When it usually is not
Ceremonies. Weddings, burials, and celebrations funded by loans to satisfy other people’s expectations.
Depreciating consumption. Phones, clothes, furniture, holidays.
Servicing other debt. Borrowing to repay a loan is the beginning of a spiral, not a solution to one.
Anything you are hiding. From your spouse, or from yourself.
Anything driven by shame. The most expensive financial decisions people make are made to avoid embarrassment.
If you are already in it
Most people asking this question are not deciding whether to borrow. They already have, and they are looking for a way out.
Write it all down. Every debt, the balance, the rate, the repayment date. People avoid this because the total is frightening. You cannot plan around a number you refuse to look at.
Attack the highest rate first. Pay the minimum on everything, and put every spare naira into the most expensive debt. Mathematically this is optimal. If you need psychological momentum instead, clear the smallest balance first — a strategy that works slightly worse on paper and considerably better in practice for many people.
Talk to the lender before you default. Most institutions will restructure. Almost none will restructure after you have gone silent for three months.
Tell your spouse everything, now. Whatever the reaction, it will be worse in six months when they find out another way.
Stop borrowing. This sounds obvious. It is the step people skip.
Do not despair spiritually. Debt is a financial condition, not a measure of your standing with God. Christians in debt frequently withdraw from church out of shame, which removes the community that could help.
What the wisdom actually amounts to
Scripture does not forbid borrowing. It warns, repeatedly, that debt costs freedom — and it treats freedom as valuable enough that the warning is worth taking seriously.
So the sound position is neither never borrow nor borrow whenever useful. It is closer to: borrow rarely, for things that produce rather than consume, at rates you have actually calculated, with your spouse’s agreement, and with a written plan to be out.
Most of the debt destroying Nigerian families right now would not survive those five tests. That is the practical value of asking the question properly rather than answering it with a verse.
This article is general guidance, not financial advice. For decisions involving significant sums, speak to a qualified financial adviser familiar with your circumstances.
