It seems to me, that J.I. Packer got it right, 30 years ago, when he explained the wrath of God against men. Here is an excerpt from the chapter by the same title in “Knowing God”:
God’s wrath in the Bible is something they choose for themselves. Before hell is an experience inflicted by God, it is a state for which man himself opts, by retreating from the light which God shines in his heart to lead him to Himself. When John writes, “he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the only Son of God”, he goes on to explain himself as follows, “And this is the judgment that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:18f). He means just what he says: the decisive act of judgment on the lost is the judgment which they pass upon themselves, by rejecting the light that comes to them in and through Jesus Christ. In the last analysis, all that God does subsequently in judicial action towards the unbeliever, whether in this life or beyond it, is to show him, and lead him into, the full implications of the choice he has made.
The basic choice was and is simple – either to respond to the summons “Come unto Me …take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me” (Mtt. 11:28f), or not; either to ‘save’ one’s life by keeping it from Jesus’ censure, and resisting His demand to take it over, or to ‘lose’ it by denying oneself, shouldering one’s cross, becoming a disciple, and letting Jesus have His own disruptive way with me. In the former case, Jesus tells us, we may gain the world, but it will do us no good, for we shall lose our souls; though in the latter case, by losing our life for His sake, we shall find it (Matt. 16:24ff).
But they are not arbitrary inflictions; they represent, rather, a conscious growing into the estate in which one has chosen to be. The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defying God, having God against him, and he shall have his preference. Nobody stands under the wrath of God save those who have chosen to do so. The essence of God’s action with wrath is to give men what they choose, in all its implications; nothing more, and equally nothing less. God’s readiness to respect human choice to this extent may appear disconcerting and even terrifying, but it is plain that His attitude here is supremely just, and poles apart from the wanton and irresponsible inflicting of pain which is what we mean by cruelty.
We need, therefore, to remember that the key to interpreting the many biblical passages, often highly figurative, which picture the divine King and Judge as active against men in wrath and vengeance, is to realize that what God is hereby doing is no more than to ratify and confirm judgments which those whom he ‘visits’ have already passed on themselves by the course they have chosen to follow. – from “Knowing God”, by J. I. Packer (p. 138, 139)
