The passage doesn't say it is an 'unreal' faith, it says it is a DEAD faith.
Which means it once was alive, but it died.
Regarding Lot, where was the EVIDENCE that was SEEN of that faith?
That is what James is talking about, not what Lot 'felt'.
Lot didn't change anything in his life to show that faith.
He couldn't even convince his own family to flee the city.
So Lot's faith was a DEAD faith, it produced no fruits that could be seen.
Lot was saved because Abraham prayed for him, or else he would have died in the city with the rest of the sinners.
“The passage doesn’t say it is an ‘unreal’ faith, it says it is a DEAD faith.”
Semantics. A dead faith is not a real saving faith. Can such a faith him? The answer of James is clearly NO. (V. 14
“If you don’t have fruit you either may be 1. unsaved or 2. saved but apostate.”
A faith that will not bear fruit is not salvific, nor is one that denies the faith.
Jas 2:24
justified and, not by faith only — that is, by “faith without (separated from: severed from) works,” its proper fruits (see on Jam_2:20). Faith to justify must, from the first, include obedience in germ (to be developed subsequently), though the former alone is the ground of justification. The scion must be grafted on the stock that it may live; it must bring forth fruit to prove that it does live. - JFB
Rather than admit that you were wrong in asserting that James “isn’t saying that the person is unsaved” you have only made matters worse by trying to defend it.
As for Lot, you must read more into the text than what it says to magnify his faults, while ignoring any virtue. The man was weak, and thus did things such as praying for the permissive will of God, (Gn. 19:17-22) and his skeptical family was partly his fault, though he was married and had married off daughters, and preserved the remaining one as virgins - no small accomplishment among a people “giving themselves over to fornication.” (Jude 1:7)
But “charity shall cover the multitude of sins, “(1Pt. 4:8) and “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”, (John 15:13) and Lot constrained the visitors to receive his hospitality, and then did in-deed put his life in danger to save the brethren, while valuing their lives over that of his two of his daughters as well, in his desperation to protect them. (Gn. 19:1-10). (Gn. 19:1-10) And i dare say that even his offer of hospitality and insistence that they accept it is more than most American Christians will do, while what measure ye mete [including judging Lot], it shall be measured to you again”. (Mt. 7:2)
“I have no idea what you are talking about here. And frankly, don’t care.”
This has been a problem continually, despite my patiently instructing you, which must have an end.