The Physics of Finance: Servitude by Signature Text: Proverbs 22:7
Introduction: Covenants, Chains, and Common Sense
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied theology. It is divine wisdom for life in the real world, a world of commerce and conflict, of sowing and reaping, of wisdom and folly. And in our day, a day of staggering national debt, of credit scores that function as character references, and of financial anxieties that gnaw at the soul of millions, the book of Proverbs speaks with a piercing and unwelcome clarity. Unwelcome, because it refuses to flatter our modern conceits. It refuses to call our bondage freedom, our foolishness sophisticated, or our chains of debt mere financial tools.
We live in an era that has mastered the art of the euphemism. We don't have debt; we have leverage. We aren't broke; we have a negative cash flow situation. We are not slaves to the bank; we are valued customers. But the Holy Spirit, through Solomon, is not interested in our delicate sensibilities. He is interested in the truth, because it is the truth that sets men free. And the truth about debt is that it is a form of servitude. It is a self-inflicted bondage.
Proverbs 22:7 is not a complicated verse. It is a straightforward statement of financial cause and effect. It describes the physics of money. If you jump off a roof, gravity ensures you will go down. If you sign on the dotted line to borrow what you have not earned, a form of gravity also takes hold. You go "under." You place yourself under an obligation, under another man's authority. This proverb lays bare the power dynamics inherent in the relationship between the lender and the borrower. It is a relationship of ruler and ruled, of master and servant.
Our task here is not to moralize about the evils of money. Money is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for glorious, God-honoring purposes, or it can be used to build idols and forge chains. Our task is to understand the nature of the tool and the nature of the chains. We must see that financial wisdom is not a separate category from spiritual wisdom. To be wise with your money is a non-negotiable part of what it means to be wise, period. To be foolish with your money is to be a fool. And God has called us to be wise.
The Text
The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is the slave of the lender.
(Proverbs 22:7 LSB)
The Unyielding Reality (v. 7a)
The first clause sets the stage with a blunt observation about how the world works:
"The rich rules over the poor..." (Proverbs 22:7a)
Now, we must be careful here. This is a proverb, not a command. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. The Bible is not saying, "It is a good and righteous thing for the rich to rule the poor." In fact, Scripture is filled with thunderous warnings against the rich who use their power to oppress the poor (James 5:1-6). This verse is simply stating a fact of life in a fallen world. It is an observation of a basic power dynamic. Wealth creates influence. Wealth creates power. To deny this is to be willfully blind.
The man with capital has options that the man without capital does not. The man who owns the factory sets the hours for the men who work in it. The man who owns the land determines what will be planted in it. This is not, in itself, sinister. It is simply reality. God is not a Marxist. He does not condemn the very existence of economic disparity. Abraham was rich. Job was rich. God promises that one of the blessings of obedience is that His people would lend to many and borrow from none (Deuteronomy 28:12). The sin is not in having wealth; the sin is in loving it, trusting it, and using it to grind the faces of the poor.
But the wisdom here is for the poor man, and for the man who is tempted to become a borrower. The wisdom is this: understand the game. Understand the nature of the field you are playing on. Do not wander into financial arrangements with a naive sense that power dynamics do not exist. They do. The rich man has the upper hand. He has the leverage. Acknowledging this reality is the first step toward navigating it wisely. To pretend that the man lending you money and the man borrowing it are on a perfectly equal footing is the height of folly.
The Nature of the Chains (v. 7b)
The second clause brings the general principle of the first into the specific and personal realm of borrowing.
"...And the borrower is the slave of the lender." (Proverbs 22:7b LSB)
The word is "slave." In the Hebrew, it is ebed, the common word for servant or slave. This is not hyperbole. It is theological precision. When you borrow money, you are selling a portion of your future. You are making a promise that encumbers your future labor, your future time, and your future freedom. The lender has a legal and moral claim on your future productivity until the debt is repaid. You work, and a portion of your labor belongs to him before it ever reaches your hand. This is a form of servitude.
Think about it practically. The debtor is not free. He cannot make decisions with the same liberty as a free man. Can he take a lower-paying job that he would love, one that would be better for his family's spiritual health? Not if it prevents him from making his payments. Can he give generously to a need in the church? Not if that money is already spoken for by Visa. Can he speak prophetically to an injustice being perpetrated by his employer? Not if that employer is also his creditor, or if losing the job means defaulting on the mortgage.
Debt creates what I have called "handles." It gives others handles on you, levers by which they can steer, manipulate, or control you. When the world system wants to enforce compliance, whether it is to a medical mandate or a social credit score, who are the first to bend the knee? It is the men who are leveraged to the hilt. The man who is debt-free has a glorious liberty. He can look the world in the eye and say "no." The man in debt has to ask his banker for permission.
This is why the apostle Paul echoes this proverb in the New Covenant. "Owe no one anything, except to love each other" (Romans 13:8). The only debt that a Christian should be comfortable carrying is the perpetual, delightful debt of love for his brother. All other debts are a form of bondage that compromise our ability to serve our true Master. You cannot serve both God and mammon, and debt is one of mammon's most effective leashes.
Wisdom, Not Legalism
Now, having said all this, we must distinguish between wisdom and a new form of legalism. Is all debt sin? The Bible does not say that. There are times in Scripture where debt is regulated, not absolutely forbidden (Exodus 22:25). A mortgage to buy a productive asset like a home, if entered into cautiously and with a clear plan for repayment, is in a different category than racking up credit card debt to pay for vacations and lattes. The former is a calculated risk to obtain an asset; the latter is presuming upon the future to finance your present consumption.
The point of the proverb is not to create a flat prohibition that we can turn into a new Pharisaism. The point is to teach us the nature of debt, so that we treat it like a dangerous tool. You might use a chainsaw, but you do so with immense respect for what it can do to you if you are careless. You don't juggle chainsaws. In the same way, we should have a holy fear of debt. We should avoid it whenever possible. We should hate it. We should work diligently and live frugally in order to get out of it as quickly as possible.
The modern world, and particularly the modern evangelical world, has made its peace with debt. We have baptized it. We have financial planning seminars that teach you how to "manage" your debt, as though you were managing a portfolio. But you don't manage a master; you serve him. The biblical counsel is not to manage your debt, but to eliminate it. The goal is freedom. The goal is to have only one Master, Jesus Christ.
The Gospel for Debtors
This brings us to the ultimate foundation. Why is this principle of slavery-by-debt woven into the fabric of the world? Because it is a parable. It is a physical illustration of a much deeper spiritual reality. Every man and woman born into this world is born into a debt they cannot possibly pay. We are born debtors to the holy law of God.
The law says, "You shall be holy, for I am holy," and we have been unholy. The law says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart," and we have loved ourselves. The wages of this sin is death (Romans 6:23). We are slaves to sin, and our debt leads to eternal bankruptcy in hell.
We stand before God as the ultimate poor, and He is the ultimate rich. We are the ultimate borrower, and He is the ultimate lender, the righteous Judge. And the verdict is guilty. The debt is due.
Into this desperate situation comes the Gospel. The good news is that God the Son, Jesus Christ, entered into our bankrupt world. He came to the slave market of sin. And He did something that no other has ever done. He assumed our debt. He "struck hands," as Proverbs says, becoming surety for us. On the cross, the full weight of our spiritual debt was placed upon Him. The bill came due, and He paid it. He paid it not with gold or silver, but with His own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19).
The receipt was nailed to the cross, and when He cried out "It is finished!" He was using a Greek commercial term, tetelestai, which means "Paid in full." The debt is cancelled. The slave is set free.
"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." (Colossians 2:13-14 LSB)
Therefore, the Christian who understands the gospel should be the person on earth who is most allergic to financial bondage. Why? Because we, of all people, know the glory of being debt-free. We know the joy of having an unpayable debt cancelled by an act of sheer grace. To then turn around and cheerfully entangle ourselves in new chains, to sell ourselves back into a lesser form of servitude to a credit card company, is to live inconsistently with the freedom we have been given in Christ.
Our freedom from the ultimate debt should motivate us to seek freedom from all lesser debts. Not as a way of earning God's favor, but as a way of walking in the freedom that is already ours. We are no longer slaves. So let us live like it. Let us work diligently, live simply, give generously, and owe no man anything, except to love him. For in doing so, we display to a watching world, enslaved in ten thousand ways, the glorious liberty of the children of God.