What does it mean to have a living faith?

In the Bible, Paul and James began at different places in the Christian life. Paul begins at the beginning, when a person is considering to become a Christian and enters into a relationship with Christ. Paul says, it happens by putting your faith in Him. It’s by grace through faith.

And in James chapter two, after you’ve entered that relationship by grace through faith, such a man James says, must live a new life. For he is a new creature. He’s first justified by grace through faith, and now is beginning the sanctification process of growth.​

I’ve concluded that in order to truly become a Christian, we have to have that living faith that James talks of. 
James 2:14-17 tells us, “What use is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.