Yes Tatu is wise for his age. Wish there were more young men like him instead of those Wild Boys surfer dude types (I'm talking about a generation that fed on MTV and talk like MTV)
Anyway, righteousness is a gift. Either you have it or you don't. It is also a person really, cos the Bible says that Jesus is our righteousness, wisdom, sanctification. So as long as you are born again and in Christ, you are as righteous as God, simply becos the righteousness you have as a gift comes from the Lord. It's His own righteousness He has imparted to you.
Where do works come in then? If you are truly born again, there will be works to prove it TO MEN NOT TO GOD.
Our good works are for MAN to see that we indeed are different, called out from the world.
The egs given are Abraham and Rahab. If you think about it, Abraham believed and was made righteous some 15 years BEFORE he had works -- the work of sacrificing his son which James was refering to. His son was by now a "young lad" -- about 15?
So his work came some 15 years after being made righteous.
Likewise for Rahab. If I';m not wrong, she believed some 40 years earlier, when she heard all about what God had done for the Israelites -- opening up the red sea and all. She believed then, I believe, but her good work of hiding the spies came only some 40 years later.
The problem today is that once someone becomes a Christian, we expect good works from them the next day.