Faith in this context really means trust in God. It is an injunction to trust God, not ourselves, whether our faith or our works. Another problem is a terminological one. Faith is by definition a response to God. Works are not necessarily.
Atheists can do good works.
This creates an asymmetry in the terms, because one can have works within religious significance, but faith is by definition centered on God. In fact there's more symmetry in reality than the terminology would indicate. However because of the assymetry in terminology one can speak of good works that are not religious. But the equivalent in the areas of feelings and beliefs are not faith. They are something that only looks like faith.