What is the difference between Christianity and religion according to Les?
Religion is man's attempt to please God, and it prompts hatred, precipitates war, and leads into legalism. Christianity is never a religion; it is God reaching down in mercy and grace to a lost human race. Religion never does that, according to the transcript.
Les explains that he has no time for the word religion and calls it the most awful term in the human language. He says religion prompts hatred, precipitates war, and takes people down the dark path of legalism, because religion is always man's attempt to somehow please God. By contrast, Christianity is never a religion; it is God reaching down in mercy and grace to a lost human race. Religion never does that. Paul uses religion in a bad light when he says he was saved out of the Jew's religion, because that is what he was: religious. Yet as a religious person he hated the very name of Jesus of Nazareth. The context then moves to the religious person, specifically the religious Jew Paul addresses in verse 17.