‘So then, brothers and sisters, stand fast, and hold the traditions which you were taught whether by word or by letter from us.'
Because of this working of God in His own they are exhorted to ‘stand fast', both against the working of the Evil One and against the fears that pervade them. And one way to stand fast against all that the future holds is by ‘holding the traditions'. The word for ‘traditions' signifies a body of truth which stands on its own. It would include the recognised traditions concerning the life and teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ which were circulated in the churches, and the letters of Paul, the foundation stones of the New Testament.
This cannot reasonably be applied to later traditions. Paul is not speaking of ‘the traditions of the church', he is speaking of traditions, including his own Apostolic letters, which he brought to them and which he had authenticated (compare 2 Thessalonians 3:6). All the writers of New Testament letters assumed that there was a body of recognised truth against which false teachers could be judged.
A similar thought occurs in 1 Corinthians 16:13 where we are told to ‘stand fast in the faith'. We are also to ‘stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made us free' and not to turn from dependence on the grace of God to any form of self-justification (Galatians 5:1-4), to ‘stand fast in one spirit, with one mind', united together in Christ (Philippians 1:27), to ‘stand fast in the Lord', the sphere of strengthening and security (Philippians 4:1), For by this we life which is life indeed (1 Thessalonians 3:8).