Salaam and welcome to the forum
We have free will to choose but certain choices we make can be sinful according to our religion ( if we believe in it and follow it.)
We know that we could be punished for example if we took pork and whiskey. Still there are some people who choose to take them knowing that it is a sin...nobody forced them to do it.
You said 'What I can make out from this is the fact we are being forced by God to follow his law. (For good but still we're forced)'
I think that you need to look at this the other way around. You have the free will to choose if Islam is the religion you wish to follow. If you feel that this is a true faith and the Quran is the word of God, you become a believer.
Then you submit to the laws and regulations of the faith because you believe them to be God's commandments.
Part and parcel is to have prohibitions in certain areas of the faith which you accept because you are a believer and you submit. It is part of our test of our commitment to God by refraining from them.
It's the same with the laws of the land in which we live. There are laws and if you break them you can be punished. For example in the U.K, you can't carry most types of knives on your person. If caught by the police, you could be prosecuted and face a jail term.
So by your statement you could extrapolate that 'we are being forced by our country to follow their laws'
The punishments are there as deterrents, be it the laws of the land or the laws of God.