“Whoever falls on that stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”
— Luke 20:18, NKJV
The imagery in Jesus’ words is stark and unyielding. It reveals the truth about the human condition and the universal difficulty of repentance. Falling on the stone—Christ Himself—means entering into brokenness, humility, and the destruction of every idol that clings to the heart. In Luke 9:24, Jesus sharpens the meaning: losing life for His sake is the only path to finding true life, while clinging to life on our own terms leads inevitably to loss.
To fall on the stone is to surrender everything. To refuse is to be crushed beneath the weight of what we tried to preserve.
Jesus’ words in Luke 20 also reach back to Isaiah 8:14, where God describes Himself as both a sanctuary and a stone of stumbling. Isaiah prophesied the coming Assyrian invasion—an event marking the loss of the ten northern tribes and the formation of the Samaritan people. By invoking the imagery of the stumbling stone, Jesus invited the religious leaders to see a prophetic pattern repeating before their eyes. The truth they resisted had been spoken long before, and the call to repentance echoed with the force of history behind it.
The warning was clear to them, and it is clear to us.
The human heart resists truth because truth requires loss—loss of perceived security, loss of self-determination, loss of cherished patterns that stand opposed to God. The world makes that resistance easy. Its noise, its comforts, its culture anesthetize us, urging us to look backward like Lot’s wife even as destruction approaches. This tension—the desire to keep what is familiar while knowing it must be abandoned—is not merely a struggle of ancient leaders. It is our struggle.
Paul describes this battle in Romans 8, calling believers to mortify the deeds of the flesh. These deeds do not simply distract; they drive us into enmity with God. Yet for those in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation, for the Spirit leads where the flesh cannot go. To walk by the Spirit is to accept the necessary brokenness that falling on the stone requires.
This brokenness is not a peripheral matter. Religious habits—attendance, giving, moral restraint—mean nothing unless the heart has fallen on the stone, been broken, and forsaken everything to take up the cross. Only then does judgment pass over. Only then does life truly begin.
Legacy Stewardship Through the Lens of the Stone
Legacy stewardship planning, when viewed through the truth of Luke 20:18, becomes something far deeper than financial strategy, asset transfer, or organizational charity. It becomes an act of repentance, surrender, and testimony.
If falling on the stone is the only path to life, then legacy stewardship begins with the same brokenness. It requires confronting the idols that shape how resources are held, used, and protected. It asks whether decisions are made to preserve life on our terms or to lose life for Christ’s sake.
Legacy stewardship shaped by repentance asks questions such as:
– What aspects of my life and resources still resist falling on the stone?
– Does my planning reflect a heart that has surrendered everything, or one that is still trying to save its own life?
– Do my decisions point future generations toward Christ as sanctuary—or toward the culture that pulls hearts away from Him?
Just as Jesus connected His warning to the pattern of Isaiah, legacy stewardship must also acknowledge patterns—patterns of the heart, of desires, of priorities, and of generational influence. To ignore these patterns is to risk repeating them.
Stewardship rooted in brokenness does not cling to wealth, status, or personal preference. It seeks to dismantle anything that stands between the heart and obedience. It recognizes that the greatest legacy is not accumulated assets but the testimony of a life surrendered to Christ—the kind that teaches others not to look back, not to resist the Spirit’s call, and not to be anesthetized by a world facing judgment.
In this way, legacy planning becomes an extension of discipleship. It becomes a declaration that everything—finances, possessions, influence, relationships, and even one’s future impact—is placed on the stone willingly, broken so that life may be found in Him alone.
To fall on the stone is to choose life.
To refuse is to be crushed beneath what we tried to save.
Legacy stewardship planning, shaped by this reality, becomes a holy act of surrender—a way of ensuring that what is passed on is not merely wealth, but a witness to the truth that only Christ can preserve what matters forever.
By Christopher L. Walker at myfathersestate.com
