Observance of the law became a substitute for the relationship with the lawgiver. We call it legalism. Legalism is an exaggerated concern with the law. It assigns more power to the law than to the lawgiver. And indeed the law becomes a power, an oppressive power in our own hands.
Legalism is really our own anxious efforts to limit and restrict the law.
Our fear and anxiety before the power of the law are the result of having forgotten God who gave the law to serve life. We pick and choose the laws we want and try to forget the ones we do not like. The effort at keeping the law became so important that the law became more significant than God. Now we know about this in our own world. Students in school focus more on tests than their relationship to the subject matter.