Hello again Guojing, I believe that a proper understanding of what is written in the Bible often requires that we take a deeper look, one that goes beyond our 'first blush' impressions of a verse or passage, to have any hope of arriving at the Lord's intended meaning. This should not be surprising considering that great number of human authors that He chose to use, their varied situations in life and POV's, that they wrote what they did more than two millennia ago, as well a number of other factors.
That said, I believe exactly what you do, that faith w/o works will not save anyone, but that does 'not' mean that our works have anything to do with our salvation (other than demonstrating to us that it is real/that we are really and truly saved), as Jesus, Paul, Peter and others make plain to us in many other passages.
Surely you'd agree that a proper exegesis of a passage must not directly contradict what is taught (in other places) in the Bible
Perhaps this will be helpful (it's a quote from Calvin, and just FYI, Luther taught the exact same principle using slightly different words),
"We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone"
The fact of the matter is, if the word δικαιόω (translated as "justified" in our Bibles) carries the same meaning in St. James' Epistle as it does in many/most places in the Pauline Epistles, then we have a big problem, because that would mean that the Bible contradicts itself. The good news is, 1. words have more than one meaning, and 2. I believe St. James makes his meaning clear (by what he wrote in Chapter two prior to v24 .. cf v18).
~Deut
James wrote his letter to the 12 tribes, and he wrote it before Paul wrote any of his epistles.
I think many people assumed that, just because James was placed after Paul's letters, that James must have read and understood everything Paul said, before writing his letters to the 12 tribes.
There is no worry of any contradiction to me. James was writing to the Jews and he was preaching the gospel of the cicumcision to them, that they needed works together with their faith.
The ascended Christ never told any of them, including James, that the Law of Moses was no longer required from the Jews.