The approximating Hamiltonian method of N. N. Bogolubov, Jr. is generalized to models with nonpolynomial intensive-observable interactions. The original Hamiltonian is proved to be thermodynamically equivalent to one linear in the intensive-observable trial Hamiltonian. We show that the exact expression for the free energy density in the thermodynamic limit can be obtained from a min-max principle for the system with trial Hamiltonian.