The price to pay

Small group is consistantly a blessing to me. I love the people there, I feel I learn every week. I feel loved, encouraged and needed. A lovely place to be.
Recently at church we have had preaching on forgiveness, on repentance, on the cross. I missed one week because I was out with the young people. This week we were discussing the sermon and looking deeper at forgiveness, the small group filled me in about the sermon, about Philemon and the wonderful story and difficult time he went through.
It was an excellent summary! I got a lot from the group filling in the gaps.
Then, we began to discuss forgiveness. The general consensus was that we must forgive like Jesus did for us (I was fine with that, spot on) but people must still be punished for doing wrong (I couldn't believe what I was hearing, we are not punished for sin).
It seemed to be that this was all wrong, 'No, surely we need to forgive as Jesus did, without consequence, we sinned, we hurt our Lord but still we are free to be in a relationship with him, surely this is how we must live' I thought.
My understanding was... even if something horrific happens to you, you still must forgive and love as if it had not happened, this horrific thing should not happen again but you were safe in the knowledge the perpetrator had been forgiven, there need not be any consequence for the sin or crime because there was no consequence for our sin or crime from the Lord.
I then had a bit of a brainwave (I might credit this one to God speaking to me).
Of course there was consequence for our sin. Jesus was that consequence. He paid a HUGE price for each and every one of us on the cross. He took that incredible weight of sin on his shoulders and died in our place. The price was so high there was nothing any of us could do without Jesus, without his love on the cross.
So does forgiveness come with consequences? Of course it does.
"Should we keep on sinning so he can keep on forgiving? Of course not!" After forgiveness pain, suffering and sin must stop.
If sin does not stop, if we do not have repentance, if we continue to be wicked there must be consequence, a serial killer, a long term abuser, a professional theif must stop committing crime, and in this world they must pay the price. In the kingdom, Jesus paid the price, hence we must accept this and turn away from our sin.
We need to repent. If not then there may be consequence (I say may, there will, but see last post...!)

I haven't really got this across very well.