There is still a difference because of what was happening during the time periods, in the Old testament it was just God and his people. You have to understand how close God was to his people God was literally walking through the garden of Eden.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.(Genesis 3:8)
He spoke directly to his prophet Moses: He said, “Listen to my words:
“When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses he is faithful in all my house.With him I speak face to face clearly and not in riddles he sees the form of the Lord.Why then were you not afraid
to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:6-8)
So because God was this close to his people during the Old testament he expected certain things from them hence why he got extremely angry when they turned against him. Just to reaffirm this:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it ton their hearts.And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” ( Jeremiah 31:31-34)
The same thing can’t be said about the New Testament in which Jesus came into the world. Many things where changed and reaffirmed, and as Jesus died on the cross for our sins the gates of heaven where opened and God started treating people with more mercy. Jesus had purchased for us the rewards of eternal life. There is a big difference between when Jesus came into this world and when he hadn’t yet come into this world.