Baptism as a Sure Sign

A Lutheran prayer of thanksgiving for the sure sign of baptism:

O my God, I am a sinner, and yet I am not a sinner. Alone and apart from Christ, I am a sinner. But in my Lord Jesus Christ and with him, I am no sinner. I firmly believe that he has destroyed all my sins with his precious blood. The sign of this is that I am baptized, cleansed by God's word, and declared absolved and freed from all my sins. In the sacrament of the true body and blood of my Lord Jesus Christ I have received as a sure sign of grace the forgiveness of sins. This he has won and accomplished for me by the shedding of his precious blood. For this I thank him in eternity. Amen.

  —Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 77.