Luke 18:18
Luke 18:1818Then a certain ruler asked Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
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.
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 with (the law cannot give life) and (the gift of God is eternal life) to show that the question is misframed — life is given, not earned.
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 , , ). 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 .