The Union of Faith and Works (2:26)
This is what James pleads for, not the divorce between creed and conduct, which is alas only too prevalent even today. There should be an indissoluble marriage between faith and works, a union as close as that between spirit and body. “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.” By “spirit” here James means simply the breath of life, without which the body is dead. “False faith is virtually a corpse” (Hort).
By this striking paradox James attacks the root of the whole matter and has his last word on the subject. Hort remarks that James by the use of the phrase “justified by works” seems to be answering Paul in Romans 4:2 or a misuse of Paul’s “justified by faith” (Rom. 5:1), though he does not see how James could have seen Paul. I have already expressed my own conviction that James and Paul are not really answering one another. They are discussing different aspects of the subject and touch only at points and go off along other lines. In all probability each would agree to the statements of the other if the language of each were put in the proper perspective. Certainly they agreed when they were together in Jerusalem (Acts 15; Gal. 2:1-10). But it is important for us that our faith shall be real and vital, not hollow and dead.