What does it actually mean to be blessed?

Most people answer that question with a list of things they have - health, family, financial security, a sense that life is going well. Jesus answered it differently. Radically differently.

In the most famous sermon ever preached, Christ opened with eight declarations that turned the world's definition of blessing on its head. He called the poor in spirit blessed. The mourners. The meek. The persecuted. Not the successful, the celebrated, or the comfortable - but people the surrounding culture would never put on a platform.

Complete: The Life Jesus Called Blessed is a deep, readable exploration of the Beatitudes and the Greek word at the heart of them: makarios - a word the ancient world applied to its gods, meaning a state of sufficiency so complete it cannot be touched by outward circumstances. When Jesus used it to open His Sermon on the Mount, He was not describing a feeling. He was describing a condition. A person. A kind of life.

This is a book about who you are becoming, not just what you are doing.

Drawing on the teaching tradition of early Christianity, accessible Greek scholars, and decades of pastoral experience, Carlton Coon Sr. walks through all eight Beatitudes with the same question Jesus was answering: What does the fully formed, complete Christian life actually look like?

Inside this book, you will discover:

• Why the English word happy is the wrong translation - and what makarios actually promises
• How poverty of spirit is the door through which everything else enters
• What godly mourning looks like in a culture engineered to feel nothing
• The ancient Greek word for meek - and why it describes not weakness but the most focused power in the room
• The difference between an appetite for righteousness and a genuine hunger for it
• Why the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers are not three different types of Christians - they are the same person, seen from three angles
• What the final beatitude reveals about the first seven, and why persecution is not the exception to the blessed life but the confirmation of it

The Beatitudes are not a self-improvement checklist. They are a portrait - of Christ, and of the life He calls His followers into. A life the world cannot manufacture, cannot purchase, and cannot take away.

Who This Book Is For

If you have read the Beatitudes before and wondered whether they were meant for ordinary people or only for spiritual giants - this book is for you. If you sense a gap between what the Christian life is supposed to look like and what your daily experience feels like - this book is for you. If you lead a small group, teach a class, or pastor a congregation and want to bring your people face to face with one of the richest passages in all of Scripture - this book is for you.

About the Author

Carlton L. Coon Sr. is a pastor, author, and ministry leader with more than forty years of experience in local church ministry and national denominational leadership. He is the founding Director of UPCI Sages 55+ and the author of more than forty books. Complete grew out of a season of teaching through the Life of Christ - a season that became one of the most formative of his own journey.

The life Jesus calls blessed is available to you. It begins here.