Scripture teaches that "the Law" is a teacher.. What does it teach?.. That "you" cannot follow the law.. especially Moses law.. For when you break one law you have broken them all.. i.e. where does it stop?.. Where does following the law stop?.. The answer is never it never stops.. the law is relentless.. it dogs your steps to the end and past the end.. NOBODY can follow the law exactly.. THAT IS what it teaches..
What then?.. Grace is required.. Forgiveness is required at some point.. How can forgiveness and the law exist together?.. By Love.. Love is the unifying factor..
Love the lord your God with everything in you, and love your neighbor as yourself.. Thats what the law SHOULD teach.. Many get bogged in between the law, forgiveness and love.. Jesus made it simple.. to those THAT learned the lessons the law teaches.. To those that didn't learn.. well their confusion will drive them nutz.. Probably in a sheep pen with others just as crazy.. You know an asylum..
The Law is Mosissimus Mose. It makes us aware of our lack of awareness so that we beg (ps 19) for cleansing from faults of which we may not even be aware (as I construe it, anyway.)
But it is lovely, sweeter than honey. It is not only about justice as we understand it, but it is instructions on how to make your life work, how to be human.
And the Revelation of the Law is a mercy. It "proves" that God cares. And when the justice of God , as Luther says in nobis est, non nostra we find little gleams and glimmers not so much of OUR obeying the Law but of obedience happening in us.
Generic, cryptic, hurried remark:
What we're dealing with here has to do with "incarnation" and with "realized eschatology". MY view, with which I expect you'll disagree, is that before the parousia we cannot entirely dispense with sacrament. ceremony, tradition, and religious festival. This is the "not yet" aspect of the eschaton.
But because of the Incarnation, these seemingly pen-bound things are vehicles, "earnests", and foretastes of what the blessed will have in its entirety at the Last Day. Part of living in a time of dark and mirrored vision is being bound to a pen, in some respects. Part of the Love of God in this "in-between-time" is that the pen is full of blessings.