---
title: Luke 18:18
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-18-18/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-18-18.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Luke 18:18
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Luke 18:18

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Then a certain ruler asked Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "And one of the rulers questioned him, saying: 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?'"

## JW Usage

Luke 18:18 sets up the rich-young-ruler dialogue, which the Watchtower reads as a demonstration that everlasting life is obtained by obedience to Jehovah's commands — culminating, in the JW system, in association with the organisation, baptism, and a life of preaching. The ruler's question ("what must I do to inherit everlasting life?") is treated as the right kind of question, with works as the right answer-shape.

## Protestant Usage

The verse is the doorway into one of the strongest Synoptic Christological passages. Read v. 18 with vv. 19-22 as a single unit. The ruler addresses Jesus as "Good Teacher"; Jesus responds in v. 19 by defining "good" as something only God is ("nobody is good except one, God"), then proceeds in vv. 20-22 to conduct himself as if the conversation were with the rich young ruler's God. The opening question is also worth pressing: the ruler treats inheritance of life as something to be "done." Pair Luke 18:18 with Galatians 3:21-22 (the law cannot give life) and Romans 6:23 (the gift of God is eternal life) to show that the question is misframed — life is given, not earned.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders aiōnios zōē as "everlasting life" rather than the more common English "eternal life." The substitution is a systematic NWT pattern across the New Testament (compare Luke 10:25, Mark 10:17, John 3:16). Standard translations vary between "eternal" and "everlasting" but most prefer "eternal" because aiōnios in Johannine and Pauline usage carries a qualitative dimension — the life of the age to come, life of a qualitatively divine kind — alongside its durative dimension. "Everlasting" emphasises duration only, fitting the JW expectation of unending biological life on a paradise earth and losing the qualitative-life dimension that is theologically central in John 17:3.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Good Teacher Dilemma](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/good-teacher.md) — Mark 10:17–18 / Luke 18:18–19 [Deity of Christ]