The religion of the Old Testament was an elaborate system that effectively taught that God kept his distance from sinners. Even though Israel rejoiced at the presenc of God among them, that presence was paradoxically, at one and the same time, a reminder of God’s distance. The coming of Jesus abolishes this distance, and so, in another of God’s great paradoxes, the Messiah’s fulfillment of the law (cf. Matt. 5: 17-18) means that Old Testament religion is superseded.
-Peter Bolt, The Cross From a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel (p. 29)