Sometimes I make friends here in Manhattan under the weirdest of circumstances.

One such case is from a couple of years back when I was at the Ukrainian Festival on East 7^th St. and needed to make a phone call.

Using a pay phone near the corner of St. Marks Place and Third Avenue, I overheard the guy on the phone next to me mention the Norwegian Day Parade in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

This was an event I, as a Norwegian-American, had been curious about for years but then forgot existed, so I waited until the guy finished his conversation and quizzed him about it.

It turned out the parade was the next day and I immediately determined I would go to it, collecting the details from the man at the phone on its route, starting time, etc.

The next morning, I headed out to Bay Ridge and watched the parade from start to finish from various points along Fifth Avenue in the 70s. After watching the last marching band go by, I headed through a thick crowd exiting the parade to two different Norwegian social clubs in the neighborhood, one of which was offering grilled sausage and Norwegian-style picnic food from a big outdoor garden.

About an hour later, I made my way to the N subway stop at 61^st and 8^th Avenue to return to Manhattan. I was waiting on the platform for five minutes or so when I heard a man suddenly exclaim, "Hey, it's you!"

It took me at least 15 seconds for his face to register. It was the same guy from the pay phone the day before!

Both of us couldn't get over the odds of running into each other and we ended up talking the whole subway ride back into Manhattan.

When Philip (who's assured me he doesn't mind that I write about him) quickly learned I was a writer doing a book on the Bible, he told me he classifies himself as an atheist even though he's not certain the term fits his beliefs.

Philip is Jewish by blood and was raised in a Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. He says his mother, now deceased, was, for the most part, an agnostic, and his father, also deceased, followed some Jewish customs and traditions, but wasn't one to attend synagogue, etc.

While Philip and I rarely see each other, we keep in touch by phone and our once-a-month-or-so conversations almost invariably turn to spiritual matters.

Just the other day Philip called to tell me he'd decided to start reading the New Testament, hoping to finally determine whether or not to put his faith in the God of the Bible.

"I've always said that if there is a God, it has to be the God of the Jews, because of Israel and it's miraculous way of surviving," Philip reminded me.

For the first time, he told me the real story behind his atheism. He said when he was a young school child, a classmate told him he would go to hell if he didn't convert to Catholicism. As a result, Philip, who admits he's always been pessimistic by nature, developed a tremendous fear of dying and going to hell. Hence, when other peers later told him there was no God or hell, he decided he'd adopt their belief to avoid living in fear.

In recent years, Philip, who is retired and single, has spent time researching religions by attending various social events and meetings at different churches, temples, mosques, etc. across the city. He's attended services by Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jehovah's Witnesses, Greek Orthodox, Mormons, Unitarians, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists.

He's also read a great deal on world religions and, if you ask me, could be classified as a "walking encyclopedia" for his knowledge of history in all things religious.

One thing Philip continues to express to me in one way or another is how he sees hypocrisies in all of the organized faiths, making him wonder if any of it is really legit.

In our most recent phone conversation, he was once again confused over me telling him, "True Christianity isn't a religion."

"How can you say that?" he wanted to know.

I explained that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not about following man-made worship systems, rituals, laws, ceremonies, observances, ordinances, etc.

As my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), reminds people, "God gave only one religion and it was to Israel through the hands of Moses."

If you look up "religion" in Webster's dictionary, one definition reads, "The body of institutionalized expressions of sacred beliefs, observances, and social practices found within a given cultural context." Another definition says, "the profession or practice of religious beliefs: religious observances."

The word "religion" comes from the two Latin words "re" and "ligio." "Re" means to "go back," and "ligio" means "to bind." Religion then means "to bind back." It has to do with man's efforts to bind himself back to God. Involved in it are "good works" in which man tries to earn righteousness with God by his own means.

"Religion is designed to satisfy the lusts of a person's flesh just as sure as liquor is," says Jordan in a study I have on tape. "It's the desire of your flesh to do something, perform something, and feel good about having done it, obtaining something on its own."

God's goal in establishing Israel's "religion" was to show man he's a sinner. This is why He gave the nation a formal set of standards, or laws, to follow.

"The law is a hard task-master," explains Jordan. "It doesn't say, 'Keep up as best as you can.' It says, 'Do all of them or you're dead meat.' The penalty of the law is death. The law demands absolute perfection. The law tells us were sinners."

While people like to look at the division between the Old and New Testaments as the great division in the Bible, the real division is between the prophetic law program He gave Israel and the "mystery program" He gave the Body of Christ through the Apostle Paul's ministry.

In Christ Jesus, both Jews and Gentile have absolute perfect righteousness today. As Paul tells us, Christ "knew no sin" but was made to be sin for us "that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (II Cor. 5:21)

"Doesn't it thrill you to know that when God placed you in Christ, He made you as righteous as His Son—He counts you as worthy as He counts His Son?" says Jordan. "God counts us just as righteous because we have the Lord Jesus Christ’s righteousness!"

Having been justified freely by His grace, believers in Jesus Christ have peace, access and privilege with God that is in no way based on a performance system.

Because we're dead to sin and the law, it's not about following commandments to win God's favor and avoid curses.

But when you trust in any of the man-devised performance systems of the world religions, you're dependant on your performance and goodness to try and win. When you face God in judgment, though, and have to give account of your sins, there's absolutely no one who measures up.

The only hope any of us have is that God takes care of the sin problem for us and that's the good news for those who simply trust in Jesus Christ. Because Christ already put away our sin on the Cross, there's nothing to condemn us for.

Hence, grace is the exact opposite of the world's performance system that says, "If I do this, I'll get the blessing, and I'll do, and I'll do, and I'll do, and I'll get, and I'll get, and I'll get."

Paul says, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Rom. 5:20)

One of the most important verses in all of the Bible for a believer to internalize is Romans 11:6: "And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work."

What Paul's saying is, " 'Works' cancels out and destroys grace." God pulls His grace out of a message that tells a believer to work.

In another way of saying this, Paul rebukes the Galatians with, "Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" (Gal. 3:3)

"The word 'foolish' there means 'slow thinkers,' " explains Jordan. "Paul asks, 'Who hath bewitched you?' The Galatians weren't able to detect the difference between living their lives on the free gift principle of grace—responding in gratitude to what God's done for them—and the law principle of trying to earn the blessing. Instead, they got to looking at outward appearances, and great big buildings, and great big swelling crowds of people, and great entertainment with music so fine. They thought, 'It's so grand, it has to be right.' "
Satan's policy is to make the Christian life empty, vain and useless by adding the "works" of religion so that believers seek to live their lives for the Lord by their own viewpoint based on the principle of law.