"The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.  He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."
Psalm 103:8-12, New International Version

Oh how thankful I am that the above underlined statement is true.  If God treated me the way I deserve to be treated, he'd have to make a full time job out of it.  Maybe you could say the same thing about yourself.  If God ever decided to pay me back for all I'd done wrong, I'm not sure even he could afford that debt.

Has someone ever threatened to 'pay you back' for something you did to them?  I'm sure someone has said that to me, though it seems like I'd have to go back to junior high or high school to find more than a few examples of it.  There was this one guy though ...

A few years back there was a person in my life dead set on ruining my reputation simply because he felt I deserved it.  He didn't like how I responded to him regarding the actions of his wife.  She was acting out in very promiscuous ways with a mutual friend of ours, and since he didn't seem to know how to remedy the situation himself, he put the burden on me to fix it.  He felt I'd have more influence over the friend - which I didn't - so therefore it was up to me to make it all right.

We had a few conversations about it, and when I refused to intervene (for a lot of reasons) he claimed that my I felt reputation was more important than his family.  I guess in many ways it was, and is.  Without going into too much detail, this guy, the husband, was a loser of a husband for many years.  He didn't treat his wife well, he was using heavy drugs, into pornography, etc.  He and his wife had two boys together which complicated their already complicated, screwed up marriage.  To his credit he had some sort of religious epiphony and decided to change his ways.  I think he realized that his wife was going to leave him if he didn't change.  So he did ... good for him.

However, my choosing not to intervene on his behalf was not good for him, or should I say not good enough for him.  He set out to do all he could within his skill set and power to ruin me, and my reputation.  He got off to a pretty good start before, through a series of events, I put an end to it.  Several people told me what I should do to pay him back.  I did nothing.  I just let it go.  I may have been the person wronged, but it wasn't my place to pay him back.  While he did a lot of horrible things to me, I never acted upon the thoughts I had of treating him the way he 'deserved' to be treated.  Or at least the way I thought he deserved to be treated. 

I have a hard time paying people back, or seeking revenge, because I'm constantly reminded of how much God has forgiven me.  How often God has forgiven me.  It's a lot ... from what I read it's as far as "the east is from the west."  That's a whole lot of forgiveness.