Athanasius declared that, as all things were created in Christ in the beginning, so all things are recreated in Christ in the present.
If the recreation in Christ in the present was perfected by His suffering, than I suspect that so also was the creation in Christ in the beginning accomplished by His suffering. The cross was the second death of the Son, the second humilation of God in His daring to love.
Kierkegaard wrote that the experience of a relational act of love offers sacrifice and so demands suffering by it's very definition
And I believe that is not due to the imperfection of man but rather due to his perfection, such that any wanderings outside of the sufficiency of the self, any dreams of a greater justice than the consequences of reality, of worth greater than the conditions of our character, must always include risk and uncertainty and loss.
That is to say, to love another is an admission of imperfection by the perfect, the declaration of a need that will never be satisfied because it does not exist.
Love is the only unnecessary act in which humanity can participate, like God's act of creating the world, and thus it is the only act by which we may become gods.
Suffering became necessary the moment that God chose to create, to bind Himself and humble Himself to be moved by a beloved which He does not need and so were never meant to or will prove able to satisfy Him.
So we, when we choose to create, bind ourselves and humble ourselves to be moved by one another, and though we do not need each other, we love one another and in love discover not our satisfaction but our need.
