Reality is complex, continuous, and nuanced. Rule-based commandments, by nature, are limited. They only apply to specific situations. There is no nuance.
As you study the scriptures, don’t just stop at literal rules. Seek to extract higher order principles. Study the teachings of Jesus and John the Baptist in the New Testament. A great deal of their sermons attempted to expand the peoples’ understanding from rule-based commandments to principles.
Learn to develop and use your conscience as the seat of your model of God’s character. Rules are limited to specific circumstances.
Your conscience, on the other hand, is a model fitted to the commandments you’ve been told by others and those you’ve been given directly from God. It extends beyond the situational limits of the commandments you know. Your conscience circumscribes God’s commandments of which you are aware and projects light onto situations beyond your previous experience. It will inform you in all situations, not just those situations for which you know specific commandments.
While rule-based commandments inform or “train” the conscience, the conscience is the superior entity. Your obedience to some rules will not qualify you for the blessings of full obedience to your conscience. What God says includes what he says through your conscience. In fact, this is the primary channel through which he will communicate to you.
Your conscience can contradict the specific commandments you know. If a commandment contradicts your conscience, always go with your conscience. This is a hard saying, but those who abide by it will experience unprecedented growth towards God. Though this circumstance is one where you must exercise extreme caution to prevent yourself from inventing excuses to ignore commandments, finding the limits of a commandment is the only way to find something better. Your obedience to a few rules does not free you from responsibility for what your conscience tells you, whose domain includes everything, not just the limited domain of your rules.
Those who think salvation comes from obedience to a few rules will continue their lives without knowing Jesus and without obeying him, because they think they already are, in spite of actively opposing his voice to them in the conscience.
Their claim that the rules come from God will not absolve them of responsibility for breaking what God placed in their conscience. They will be surprised when, at the judgment day, God says he does not know them.
And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? (Luke 6:46)
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16)
They will never receive higher commandments than what they already possess, and because God delivers outcomes based on obedience to law, they will never receive the higher blessings corresponding to those higher commandments.