What Does Acts 15:18 Mean?
Known to God from the ages are all his works.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.THE KEY
God’s knowing precedes the ages, so what unfolds is not something God is only discovering.
THE MEANING
God’s works are already known to God across the ages. What you see unfolding is not the first moment those works enter God’s knowing. The verse holds divine awareness beyond the limits of what you can yet see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what has not yet appeared is therefore unknown to God.
THE ROOT
γνωστά
gnōsta
GROWS FROM
γνω-
gnō-
To know or recognize.
The word belongs to the same knowing family as γινώσκω (ginōskō), “to know, recognize.” This gives “known” the depth of recognition and comprehension: God’s works are within God’s knowing throughout the ages.
ALSO GROWS
ginōskō: To know, recognize, perceive.
γινώσκω
This verb shows the root’s knowing as recognition, opening the verse beyond mere facts on a record.
gnōsis: Knowledge, knowing.
γνῶσις
This noun carries the same knowing seed, emphasizing that God’s works are comprehended within God’s knowledge.
αἰῶνος
aiōnos
GROWS FROM
αἰών
aiōn
An age, a span of time.
“from the ages” in this verse is aiōnos. The time-word behind “world” is αἰῶνος (aiōnos), “age.” Its sense deepens the familiar phrase with a horizon of ages: God’s works are known across the unfolding of time.
ALSO GROWS
aiōnios: Of the age; age-lasting.
αἰώνιος
This adjective keeps the root’s time-shaped sense present wherever the verse’s horizon extends beyond a single moment.
aiōnes: Ages, spans of time.
αἰῶνες
The plural lets the root’s single span open into successive ages, echoing the breadth of God’s knowing.
THE PATTERN
What God brings about in time is already held within God’s knowing.
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient days the things not yet made, saying, My counsel will stand, and all that I delight in I will make.Your eyes see my unshaped mass. In your book every one of the days is inscribed as it is shaped, before any of them is.For whom he knew beforehand, he also marked out beforehand to be shaped together into the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.THE THREAD
I am the good shepherd. I perceive my own, and my own perceive me.The verb γινώσκω (ginōskō), “to know, recognize,” shares the γνω- family behind “known” in Acts. Here that knowing is mutual and personal, revealing the relational depth within God’s knowing of all his works.
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