The message of this verse if very appropriate for our age. Most people think that God directly punishes people for sinning. Thus we have a society thtat believes that this is too harsh. "A loving God would never do this!" Paul has it right--if you don't follow the moral order as outlined by God, then your own actions and their consequences bring aguish, sorrow, and despair. That is because without moral order, man becomes wicked by his own actions--not because God did something to you.

I like Paul's idea of "God's wrath." God can be loving--just to take you back into the fold of moral order--but he did not push you down the steps of sin and consequences so you are punished directly by him to "fall down the stairs" like a prankster setting you up. God's moral order, if followed, will bring happiness, peace, and calm within a frantic world or dealing with it. Only when man, of his own free will, chooses to go outside God's moral order, the entropy of sin, which has no moral order, brings man down--not a direct slap of the hand. God could say, "I told you so," but his love keeps giving us another chance.