I. Nothing is more evident than that the whole passage now before us is directed against the language in the Epistle to the Romans, as that language was misinterpreted by the wickedness of fanaticism; and that it does not in the slightest degree interfere with it as taken according to the meaning of the writer. The words, "Show me thy faith without thy works," are intended to allude to St. Paul's words that "a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." Taking faith in the sense in which it has often been used since that is, "correct opinion" and taking the words, "without the deeds of the law," with nothing further to explain them, and we have at once that most wicked doctrine which St. James condemns, namely, that if a man's opinions about God be right, he need care nothing for his affections and conduct, whereas St Paul was not speaking of any such belief as was no more than opinion. He did not say that "He who believes in one God is justified," but "He who believes in Jesus Christ is justified," nor, again, did he mean by believing in Jesus Christ believing in such facts about Him as the heathens believed namely, that there had been such a man crucified in Judaea under Pontius Pilate but he meant "whosoever believed that Jesus Christ died for his sins " a thing that never was believed really by any one who did not care for his sins beforehand, and can be really believed by no man without its making him care for his sins a great deal more than he ever cared before.
II. All, then, that St. James says in this passage is that correct opinions will save no man, or, to use the term "faith," not in St. Paul's sense of it, but in the unhappy sense which others have too often attached to it, that a sound faith in religious matters will alone save no man. From the language of two great Apostles, we may surely derive an important lesson, not to make one another offenders for a word. We should not condemn our brother for using words which an apostle has used before him, as he, like the Apostle, may mean no more by them than this, that Christ's people are those only in whom the Spirit of Christ abides.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. vi., p. 269.