Jesus speaks of a wrong attitude of hating people. “You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Matthew 5:43). In the Old Testament the Israelites hated the Canaanites, they hated the Philistines, they hated the Amorites, the Moabites, etc. They intended to destroy them. But Jesus now says, “I say to you, love your enemies.” Has God changed through the years? No. Man now has the higher possibility to live like Jesus Christ. He was not capable of living like Jesus in the Old Testament. Without the Holy Spirit it is impossible to really love your enemies the way God wants you to love them. You may love your enemy to get some honor as a very gracious person, but what about to love your enemy for the glory of God? Only a person filled with the Holy Spirit can do that. “So I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Remember that these are the commandments that we’re supposed to teach every single believer who is a disciple around the world. If I'm to build a church, I must build a church where every single person in that church loves every one of his enemies. If he has ten enemies and he loves nine of them, he has not obeyed that command. Jesus said, “Go into all nations and make them disciples, teaching them to obey and do everything I have commanded.” In other words, I have to go through the experience myself first, and that's why every servant of God is allowed by God to face enemies in his life - so that he can learn to love them. That's how he can teach other people to love their enemies.

That's also why every true servant of God has to face persecution - because it's only then that he can learn how to pray for those who persecute him, and then he can also teach others how to pray for those who persecute them. That is why Jesus says, “So that you can be sons of your Father Who is in heaven.” He instructs us to look at our Father in Heaven, Who “makes the Sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Think of two farmers, one is an atheist and the other is a God-fearing farmer. Their farms are next to each other, and one man prays regularly while the other man thinks that there's no God and it's all rubbish. Yet God makes the sun rise on both of them and their farms! God makes the rain fall equally on both of their farms so that they get good crops and good fruit in their trees. Do you see how good God is! He pours equally on the atheist and the God-fearing farmer, and He tells us to be like that. Be like God - equally good to the person who is good to you and to the person who is evil to you. All of this is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit - that's why we don't read such commands in the Old Testament.

Jesus goes on to say that if we only love those who love us, there’s nothing special about that, because even the tax collectors, and evil sinful people like murderers, and people in false religions and groups, do that. So if you only greet your friends or your brothers, you're no better than the heathen (Matthew 5:47).

Have you ever gone out of your way to greet somebody who doesn't want to greet you? I've done that numerous times. As a servant of the Lord, many people are upset with me because of the truth I proclaim - the truth of God's Word. Just as people were upset with Jesus and Paul and many other servants of God through these twenty centuries, many would not greet me if they were to pass me on the road. Sometimes I cross the road to go and greet them because the Bible says to greet those who don't have an interest in greeting you, to show that you have nothing against them.

Someone once asked me how many friends I have. I said as many people as there are in the world I have as friends, and the number keeps increasing every day! If there are seven billion people in the world, as far as I'm concerned, they're all my friends. I don't have any enemies; I love them all. They may consider me as their enemy, but I don't consider them as my enemy. People who have done harm to me, persecuted me, I want to pray for them. People who have cursed me, I want to bless them. “Bless those who curse you” (Matthew 5:44). Do you do that?

You know that no curse can ever harm you.That's impossible because we're under the blessing of God. Christ took every curse on the cross and now we are under the blessing of God, so any person cursing me is not going to hurt me in any way. He doesn't know that and I can, in response, bless him by saying, “God bless you.” I can turn to every human being in the world and say, “God bless you.” That’s sincerely what I desire for every single person. Whether God blesses him or not depends on his attitude, etc. but I certainly desire that God will bless him.