What is faith? Is it an emotion? It certainly at times has emotion associated with it, but it is not an emotion. Is it a mere mental resolve? It certainly must have that, but if that were all that it was it would disappear upon the mind being shaken by some catastrophic event. Is it a gut level sense? The gut or “bowels” if you will is that deep seated place in all of our lives where lies conviction, that paradigm of what we call truth.
But if that were all that it was was then it would not be a true paradigm. How can any of these expressions be evidenced in a believers life without works? To the Jew there is only one word that conveys the idea of faith and that is the word "emunah" which means living a life of continuing reliability. So Paul and James had the same problem trying to express a Jewish idea with the Greek language. They were both limited to using two different words in the Greek which were "ergon" (work, toil) and "pistis" (faith, trust). What to me seems to be going here is the attempt to separate the words "faith" and "works". The truth is though you can't separate what faith really is. If you have real faith then you will live a "life of continuing reliability. If you live a life of continuing reliability (works) then you have real faith. So when both Paul and James write on faith, as Jews they were thinking the same thing. Blessings!