Jesus' harshest words were reserved for hypocrites. The reality is, there always have been and always will be some hypocrites in the Church. But Jesus doesn't ask us to follow others; he asks us to follow Him.

There are two very important points not to miss when considering this question :

1. Jesus openly and strongly attacked hypocrisy. (Matthew 23 : 13-36)

2. Just because some Christians appear to be hypocritical, it doesn’t mean that the message of Christianity is untrue.

Think of it this way. Christians are supposed to be signposts to the truth. This is one of the way Jesus described His followers. Our lives are to point others to the reality of God and the truth about Jesus Christ. Paul Weston in his book “Why we can’t believe” looks at this issue with a helpful illustration :

 Imagine that you are driving to a small out of the way village called Lancaster, and because you’ve never been there before you are carefully watching for the signposts along the way. You come across a junction with a broken signpost, and the name of the place your looking for has been lost. You don’t know which way to go. What would your reaction be ? The last thing you’d think would be “Ah, that means that Lancaster has ceased to exist.” This wouldn’t follow at all. On the other hand you might be thinking what a useless signpost, they should replace it with a better one.” Broken signposts don’t mean that the village doesn’t exist, and when Christians are bad signposts it doesn’t mean that the truth about Christianity doesn’t exist.

 The objection that Christians are not good people remains – but there’s a saving factor. We know that we aren’t, and it’s for this very reason that we find Jesus so important. Jesus is not just a great teacher, or a fine example, in the Bible he’s called a Saviour. He rescues us from our selfishness, our indifference to the needs of others, our pride, our jealousy, our snobbishness, our lust – those things which spoil our lives, and which make us ashamed

When as Christians we go to church, we are not trying to impress other people with our uprightness and goodness. This would be like going to hospital to show how healthy you are. One aspect of any church service is the confession of our sins. We publicly acknowledge our moral and spiritual poverty – and we ask for God’s forgiveness and strength. Each church is like an outpatients’ department in a hospital for the spiritually and morally sick

But sometimes a cure takes a long time, and we are slowly being transformed, changed to His likeness when we study His word and obey His commands. Christians are not perfect people – only Jesus was perfect

Although Christians can represent Jesus either poorly or well, the  real question isn't whether there are hypocrites in the Church, but  whether Jesus is a hypocrite. If someone can prove that Jesus was a hypocrite, then the whole structure of Christianity falls into ruin. The Bible, God's Word, presents Jesus as nothing less than perfect.  Jesus' disciples testified that Jesus was without sin (1 Peter 2:22;1 John 3:5). Even Jesus himself challenged others to prove that he'd  ever sinned (John 8:46). 

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